I 


uniif1 


r^ 


LETTERS  OF  TRAVEL 


Books  by  Rudyard  Kipling 


Actions  and  Reactions 

Brushwood  Boy,  The 

Captains  Courageous 

Collected  Verse 

Day's  Work,  The 

Departmental  Ditties 
and  Ballads  and  Bar- 
rack-Room Ballads 

Diversity  of  Creat- 
ures, A 

Eyes  of  Asia,  The 

Five  Nations,  The 

France  at  War 

From  Sea  to  Sea 

History  of  England,  A 

Jungle  Book,  The 

Jungle  Book,  Second 

Just  So  Song  Book 

Just  So  Stories 

Kim 

Kipling  Stories  and 
Poems  Every  Child 
Should  Know 

Kipling  Birthday  Book, 
The 

Life's  Handicap:  Being 
Stories  of  Mine  Own 
People 


Light  That  Failed,  The 

Many  Inventions 

Naulahka,  The  (With 
Wolcott  Balestier) 

Plain  Tales  From  the 
Hills 

Puck  of  Poor's  Hill 

Rewards  and  Fairies 

Sea  Warfare 

Seven  Seas,  The 

Soldier  Stories 

Soldiers  Three,  The 
Story  of  the  Gadsbys, 
and  In  Black  and 
White 

Song  of  the  English,  A 

Soncs  from  Books 

Stalky  &  Co. 

They 

Traffics  and  Discover- 
ies 

Under  the  Deodars, 
The  Phantom  'Rick- 
shaw, and  Wee  Willie 
Winkie 

With  the  Night  Mail 

Years  Between,  The 


LETTERS  OF 
TRAVEL 


1892-1913 


By  Rudyard  Kipling 


u      t 


GARDEN  CITY  NEW  YORK 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

1920 


COPYRIGHT,  1892,  190O,  1908,  I914,  1920,  BY 

RUDYARD    KIPLING 

ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED,   INCLUDING   THAT  OF   TRANSLATION 

INTO  FOREIGN   LANGUAGES,   INCLUDING   THE   SCANDINAVIAN 


r 


* 


|  CONTENTS 

| 

J?  From  Tideway  to  Tideway  (1892) — 

PAOE 

In  Sight  of  Monadnock 3 


Across  a  Continent 17 

The  Edge  of  the  East        35 

Our  Overseas  Men 50 

Some  Earthquakes 63 

Half-a-Dozen  Pictures 75 

"Captains  Courageous" 84 

On  One  Side  Only        95 

Leaves  from  a  Winter  Note-Book      ....  108 


Letters  to  the  Family  (1907) — 


CD 

C 

.Q 

5          The  Road  to  Quebec 127 

A  People  at  Home 138 

Cities  and  Spaces 148 

Newspapers  and  Democracy 160 

Labour 172 

The  Fortunate  Towns 184 

Mountains  and  the  Pacific 197 

A  Conclusion 210 

V 


2< 


PAGE 


vi  CONTENTS 

Egypt  of  the  Magicians  (1913) — 

Sea  Travel 223 

A  Return  to  the  East 234 

A  Serpent  of  Old  Nile 245 

Up  the  River 255 

Dead  Kings 268 

The  Face  of  the  Desert 280 

The  Riddle  of  Empire 290 


FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

1892-95 

In  Sight  of  Monadnock. 

Across  a  Continent. 

The  Edge  of  the  East. 

Our  Overseas  Men. 

Some  Earthquakes. 

Half-a-Dozen  Pictures. 

"Captains  Courageous." 

On  One  Side  Only. 

Leaves  from  a  Winter  Note-Book. 


In  Sight  of  Monadnock 

After  the  gloom  of  gray  Atlantic  weather,  our 
ship  came  to  America  in  a  flood  of  winter  sunshine 
that  made  unaccustomed  eyelids  blink,  and  the 
New  Yorker,  who  is  nothing  if  not  modest,  said, 
"This  isn't  a  sample  of  our  really  fine  days;  wait 
until  such  and  such  times  come,  or  go  to  such  and 
such  a  quarter  of  the  city."  We  were  content,  and 
more  than  content,  to  drift  aimlessly  up  and  down 
the  brilliant  streets,  wondering  a  little  why  the 
finest  light  should  be  wasted  on  the  worst  pavements 
in  the  world;  to  walk  round  and  round  Madison 
Square,  because  that  was  full  of  beautifully  dressed 
babies  playing  counting-out  games,  or  to  gaze 
reverently  at  the  broad-shouldered,  pug-nosed  Irish 
New  York  policemen.  Wherever  we  went  there  was 
the  sun,  lavish  and  unstinted,  working  nine  hours  a 
day,  with  the  colour  and  the  clean-cut  lines  of 
perspective  that  he  makes.  That  any  one  should 
dare  to  call  this  climate  muggy,  yea,  even  "sub- 
tropical," was  a  shock.  There  came  such  a  man, 
and  he  said,  "Go  north  if  you  want  weather — 
weather  that  is  weather.  Go  to  New  England." 
So  New  York  passed  away  upon  a  sunny  afternoon, 

3 


4  FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

with  her  roar  and  rattle,  her  complex  smells,  her 
triply  over-heated  rooms,  and  much  too  energetic 
inhabitants,  while  the  train  went  north  to  the  lands 
where  the  snow  lay.  It  came  in  one  sweep — almost, 
it  seemed,  in  one  turn  of  the  wheels — covering  the 
winter-killed  grass  and  turning  the  frozen  ponds 
that  looked  so  white  under  the  shadow  of  lean 
trees,  into  pools  of  ink. 

As  the  light  closed  in,  a  little  wooden  town,  white, 
cloaked,  and  dumb,  slid  past  the  windows,  and  the 
strong  light  of  the  car  lamps  fell  upon  a  sleigh  (the 
driver  furred  and  muffled  to  his  nose)  turning  the 
corner  of  a  street.  Now  the  sleigh  of  a  picture-book, 
however  well  one  knows  it,  is  altogether  different 
from  the  thing  in  real  life,  a  means  of  conveyance  at 
a  journey's  end;  but  it  is  well  not  to  be  over-curious 
in  the  matter,  for  the  same  American  who  has  been 
telling  you  at  length  how  he  once  followed  a  kilted 
Scots  soldier  from  Chelsea  to  the  Tower,  out  of  pure 
wonder  and  curiosity  at  his  bare  knees  and  sporran, 
will  laugh  at  your  interest  in  "just  a  cutter." 

The  staff  of  the  train — surely  the  great  American 
nation  would  be  lost  if  deprived  of  the  ennobling 
society  of  brakeman,  conductor,  Pullman-car  con- 
ductor, negro  porter,  and  newsboy — told  pleasant 
tales,  as  they  spread  themselves  at  ease  in  the  smok- 
ing compartments,  of  snowings  up  the  line  to 
Montreal,  of  desperate  attacks — four  engines  to- 
gether and  a  snow-plough  in  front — on  drifts  thirty 


IN  SIGHT  OF  MONADNOCK  5 

feet  high,  and  the  pleasures  of  walking  along  the 
tops  of  goods  waggons  to  brake  a  train,  with  the 
thermometer  thirty  below  freezing.  "It  comes 
cheaper  to  kill  men  that  way  than  to  put  air-brakes 
on  freight  cars,"  said  the  brakeman. 

Thirty  below  freezing!  It  was  inconceivable  till 
one  stepped  out  into  it  at  midnight,  and  the  first 
shock  of  that  clear,  still  air  took  away  the  breath  as  a 
plunge  into  sea-water  does.  A  walrus  sitting  on  a 
woolpack  was  our  host  in  his  sleigh,  and  he  wrapped 
us  in  hairy  goatskin  coats,  caps  that  came  down  over 
the  ears,  buffalo  robes  and  blankets,  and  yet  more 
buffalo  robes  till  we,  too,  looked  like  walruses  and 
moved  almost  as  gracefully.  The  night  was  as 
keen  as  the  edge  of  a  newly-ground  sword;  breath 
froze  on  the  coat  lapels  in  snow;  the  nose  became 
without  sensation,  and  the  eyes  wept  bitterly  because 
the  horses  were  in  a  hurry  to  get  home;  and  whirling 
through  air  at  zero  brings  tears.  But  for  the  jingle 
of  the  sleigh-bells  the  ride  might  have  taken  place  in 
a  dream,  for  there  was  no  sound  of  hoofs  upon  the 
snow,  the  runners  sighed  a  little  now  and  again  as 
they  glided  over  an  inequality,  and  all  the  sheeted 
hills  round  about  were  as  dumb  as  death.  Only  the 
Connecticut  River  kept  up  its  heart  and  a  lane  of 
black  water  through  the  packed  ice;  we  could  hear 
the  stream  worrying  round  the  heels  of  its  small 
bergs.  Elsewhere  there  was  nothing  but  snow 
under  the  moon — snow  drifted  to  the  level  of  the 


6  FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

stone  fences  or  curling  over  their  tops  in  a  lip  of 
frosted  silver;  snow  banked  high  on  either  side  of  the 
road,  or  lying  heavy  on  the  pines  and  the  hemlocks 
in  the  woods,  where  the  air  seemed,  by  comparison, 
as  warm  as  a  conservatory.  It  was  beautiful 
beyond  expression,  nature's  boldest  sketch  in  black 
and  white,  done  with  a  Japanese  disregard  of  per- 
spective, and  daringly  altered  from  time  to  time  by 
the  restless  pencils  of  the  moon. 

In  the  morning  the  other  side  of  the  picture  was 
revealed  in  the  colours  of  the  sunlight.  There  was 
never  a  cloud  in  the  sky  that  rested  on  the  snow-line 
of  the  horizon  as  a  sapphire  on  white  velvet.  Hills 
of  pure  white,  or  speckled  and  furred  with  woods, 
rose  up  above  the  solid  white  levels  of  the  fields,  and 
the  sun  rioted  over  their  embroideries  till  the  eyes 
ached.  Here  and  there  on  the  exposed  slopes,  the 
day's  warmth — the  thermometer  was  nearly  forty 
degrees — and  the  night's  cold  had  made  a  bald  and 
shining  crust  upon  the  snow;  but  the  most  part  was 
soft  powdered  stuff,  ready  to  catch  the  light  on 
a  thousand  crystals  and  multiply  it  sevenfold. 
Through  this  magnificence,  and  thinking  nothing  of 
it,  a  wood-sledge  drawn  by  two  shaggy  red  steers,  the 
unbarked  logs  diamond-dusted  with  snow,  shouldered 
down  the  road  in  a  cloud  of  frosty  breath.  It  is  the 
mark  of  inexperience  in  this  section  of  the  country  to 
confound  a  sleigh  which  you  use  for  riding  with  the 
sledge  that  is  devoted  to  heavy  work;' and  it  is,  I 


IN  SIGHT  OF  MONADNOCK  7 

believe,  a  still  greater  sign  of  worthlessness  to  think 
that  oxen  are  driven,  as  they  are  in  most  places,  by 
scientific  twisting  of  the  tail.  The  driver  with  red 
mittens  on  his  hands,  felt  overstockings  that  come  up 
to  his  knees,  and,  perhaps,  a  silvery  gray  coon-skin 
coat  on  his  back,  walks  beside,  crying,  "Gee,  haw!" 
even  as  is  written  in  American  stories.  And  the 
speech  of  the  driver  explains  many  things  in  regard 
to  the  dialect  story,  which  at  its  best  is  an  infliction  to 
many.  Now  that  I  have  heard  the  long,  unhurried 
drawl  of  Vermont,  my  wonder  is,  not  that  the  New 
England  tales  should  be  printed  in  what,  for  the 
sake  of  argument,  we  will  call  English  and  its  type, 
but  rather  that  they  should  not  have  appeared  in 
Swedish  or  Russian.  Our  alphabet  is  too  limited. 
This  part  of  the  country  belongs  by  laws  unknown 
to  the  United  States,  but  which  obtain  all  the  world 
over,  to  the  New  England  story  and  the  ladies  who 
write  it.  You  feel  this  in  the  air  as  soon  as  you  see 
the  white-painted  wooden  houses  left  out  in  the 
snow,  the  austere  schoolhouse,  and  the  people — the 
men  of  the  farms,  the  women  who  work  as  hard  as 
they  with,  it  may  be,  less  enjoyment  of  life — the 
other  houses,  well  painted  and  quaintly  roofed,  that 
belong  to  Judge  This,  Lawyer  That,  and  Banker 
Such  an  one;  all  powers  in  the  metropolis  of  six 
thousand  folk  over  there  by  the  railway  station. 
More  acutely  still,  do  you  realise  the  atmosphere 
when  you  read  in  the  local   paper   announcements 


8  FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

of  "chicken  suppers"  and  "church  sociables"  to  be 
given  by  such  and  such  a  denomination,  sandwiched 
between  paragraphs  of  genial  and  friendly  interest, 
showing  that  the  countryside  live  (and  without  slay- 
ing each  other)  on  terms  of  terrifying  intimacy. 

The  folk  of  the  old  rock,  the  dwellers  in  the  older 
houses,  born  and  raised  hereabouts,  would  not  live 
out  of  the  town  for  any  consideration,  and  there  are 
insane  people  from  the  South — men  and  women  from 
Boston  and  the  like— who  actually  build  houses  out 
in  the  open  country,  two,  and  even  three  miles  from 
Main  Street  which  is  nearly  400  yards  long,  and  the 
centre  of  life  and  population.  With  the  strangers, 
more  particularly  if  they  do  not  buy  their  groceries  "in 
the  street,"  which  means,  and  is,  the  town,  the  town 
has  little  to  do;  but  it  knows  everything,  and  much 
more  also,  that  goes  on  among  them.  Their  dresses, 
their  cattle,  their  views,  the  manners  of  their  chil- 
dren, their  manner  towards  their  servants,  and  every 
other  conceivable  thing,  is  reported,  digested,  dis- 
cussed, and  rediscussed  up  and  down  Main  Street. 
Now,  the  wisdom  of  Vermont,  not  being  at  all  times 
equal  to  grasping  all  the  problems  of  everybody 
else's  life  with  delicacy,  sometimes  makes  pathetic 
mistakes,  and  the  town  is  set  by  the  ears.  You  will 
see,  therefore,  that  towns  of  a  certain  size  do  not 
differ  materially  all  the  world  over.  The  talk  of  the 
men  of  the  farms  is  of  their  farms — purchase, 
mortgage,    and    sale,     recorded     rights,     boundary 


IN  SIGHT  OF  MONADNOCK  9 

lines,  and  road-tax.  It  was  in  the  middle  of  New- 
Zealand,  on  the  edge  of  the  Wild  Horse  Plains,  that  I 
heard  this  talk  last,  when  a  man  and  his  wife,  twenty 
miles  from  the  nearest  neighbour,  sat  up  half  the 
night  discussing  just  the  same  things  that  the  men 
talked  of  in  Main  Street,  Vermont,  U.  S.  A. 

There  is  one  man  in  the  State  who  is  much  ex- 
ercised over  this  place.  He  is  a  farm-hand,  raised  in 
a  hamlet  fifteen  or  twenty  miles  from  the  nearest 
railway,  and,  greatly  daring,  he  has  wandered  here. 
The  bustle  and  turmoil  of  Main  Street,  the  new 
glare  of  the  electric  lights  and  the  five-storeyed  brick 
business  block,  frighten  and  distress  him  much. 
He  has  taken  service  on  a  farm  well  away  from  these 
delirious  delights,  and,  says  he,  "I've  been  offered 
#25  a  month  to  work  in  a  bakery  at  New  York. 
But  you  don't  get  me  to  no  New  York.  I've  seen 
this  place  an'  it  just  scares  me."  His  strength  is  in 
the  drawing  of  hay  and  the  feeding  of  cattle.  Winter 
life  on  a  farm  does  not  mean  the  comparative  idleness 
that  is  so  much  written  of.  Each  hour  seems  to 
have  its  sixty  minutes  of  work;  for  the  cattle  are 
housed  and  eat  eternally;  the  colts  must  be  turned 
out  for  their  drink,  and  the  ice  broken  for  them  if 
necessary;  then  ice  must  be  stored  for  the  summer 
use,  and  then  the  real  work  of  hauling  logs  for  fire- 
wood begins.  New  England  depends  for  its  fuel  on 
the  woods.  The  trees  are  "blazed"  in  the  autumn 
just  before  the  fall  of  the  leaf,  felled  later,  cut  into 


io        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

four-foot  lengths,  and,  as  soon  as  the  friendly  snow 
makes  sledging  possible,  drawn  down  to  the  wood- 
house.  Afterwards  the  needs  of  the  farm  can  be 
attended  to,  and  a  farm,  like  an  arch,  is  never  at 
rest.  A  little  later  will  come  maple-sugar  time, 
when  the  stately  maples  are  tapped  as  the  sap  begins 
to  stir,  and  beringed  with  absurd  little  buckets  (a 
cow  being  milked  into  a  thimble  gives  some  idea 
of  the  disproportion),  which  are  emptied  into 
cauldrons.  Afterwards  (this  is  the  time  of  the 
"  sugaring-ofF  parties")  you  pour  the  boiled  syrup 
into  tins  full  of  fresh  snow,  where  it  hardens,  and 
you  pretend  to  help  and  become  very  sticky  and 
make  love,  boys  and  girls  together.  Even  the  in- 
troduction of  patent  sugar  evaporators  has  not 
spoiled  the  love-making. 

There  is  a  certain  scarcity  of  men  to  make  love 
with;  not  so  much  in  towns  which  have  their  own 
manufactories  and  lie  within  a  lover's  Sabbath-day 
journey  of  New  York,  but  in  the  farms  and  villages. 
The  men  have  gone  away — the  young  men  are 
fighting  fortune  further  West,  and  the  women 
remain — remain  for  ever  as  women  must.  On  the 
farms,  when  the  children  depart,  the  old  man  and 
the  old  woman  strive  to  hold  things  together  without 
help,  and  the  woman's  portion  is  work  and  monotony. 
Sometimes  she  goes  mad  to  an  extent  which  ap- 
preciably affects  statistics  and  is  put  down  in  census 
reports.     More  often,  let  us  hope,  she  dies.     In  the 


IN  SIGHT  OF  MONADNOCK  n 

villages  where  the  necessity  for  heavy  work  is  not  so 
urgent  the  women  find  consolation  in  the  formation 
of  literary  clubs  and  circles,  and  so  gather  to  them- 
selves a  great  deal  of  wisdom  in  their  own  way. 
That  way  is  not  altogether  lovely.  They  desire 
facts  and  the  knowledge  that  they  are  at  a  certain 
page  in  a  German  or  an  Italian  book  before  a  certain 
time,  or  that  they  have  read  the  proper  books  in  a 
proper  way.  At  any  rate,  they  have  something  to 
do  that  seems  as  if  they  were  doing  something. 
It  has  been  said  that  the  New  England  stories  are 
cramped  and  narrow.  Even  a  far-ofF  view  of  the 
iron-bound  life  whence  they  are  drawn  justifies  the 
author.  You  can  carve  a  nut  in  a  thousand  different 
ways  by  reason  of  the  hardness  of  the  shell. 

Twenty  or  thirty  miles  across  the  hills,  on  the  way 
to  the  Green  Mountains,  lie  some  finished  chapters 
of  pitiful  stories — a  few  score  abandoned  farms, 
started  in  a  lean  land,  held  fiercely  so  long  as  there 
was  any  one  to  work  them,  and  then  left  on  the 
hill-sides.  Beyond  this  desolation  are  woods  where 
the  bear  and  the  deer  still  find  peace,  and  some- 
times even  the  beaver  forgets  that  he  is  persecuted 
and  dares  to  build  his  lodge.  These  things  were 
told  me  by  a  man  who  loved  the  woods  for  their 
own  sake  and  not  for  the  sake  of  slaughter — a  quiet, 
slow-spoken  man  of  the  West,  who  came  across  the 
drifts  on  snow-shoes  and  refrained  from  laughing 
when  I  borrowed  his  foot-gear  and  tried  to  walk. 


12        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

The  gigantic  lawn-tennis  bats  strung  with  hide  are 
not  easy  to  manoeuvre.  If  you  forget  to  keep  the 
long  heels  down  and  trailing  in  the  snow  you  turn 
over  and  become  as  a  man  who  falls  into  deep  water 
with  a  life-belt  tied  to  his  ankles.  If  you  lose  your 
balance,  do  not  attempt  to  recover  it,  but  drop, 
half-sitting  and  half-kneeling,  over  as  large  an  area 
as  possible.  When  you  have  mastered  the  wolf- 
step,  can  slide  one  shoe  above  the  other  deftly,  that 
is  to  say,  the  sensation  of  paddling  over  a  ten-foot 
deep  drift  and  taking  short  cuts  by  buried  fences  is 
worth  the  ankle-ache.  The  man  from  the  West 
interpreted  to  me  the  signs  on  the  snow,  showed  how 
a  fox  (this  section  of  the  country  is  full  of  foxes,  and 
men  shoot  them  because  riding  is  impossible)  leaves 
one  kind  of  spoor,  walking  with  circumspection  as 
becomes  a  thief,  and  a  dog,  who  has  nothing  to  be 
ashamed  of,  but  widens  his  four  legs  and  plunges, 
another;  how  coons  go  to  sleep  for  the  winter  and 
squirrels  too,  and  how  the  deer  on  the  Canada 
border  trample  down  deep  paths  that  are  called 
yards  and  are  caught  there  by  inquisitive  men  with 
cameras,  who  hold  them  by  their  tails  when  the  deer 
have  blundered  into  deep  snow,  and  so  photograph 
their  frightened  dignity.  He  told  me  of  people  also — 
the  manners  and  customs  of  New  Englanders  here, 
and  how  they  blossom  and  develop  in  the  Far  West 
on  the  newer  railway-lines,  when  matters  come  very 
nearly  to  civil  war  between  rival  companies  racing 


IN  SIGHT  OF  MONADNOCK  13 

for  the  same  canon;  how  there  is  a  country  not  very 
far  away  called  Caledonia,  populated  by  the  Scotch, 
who  can  give  points  to  a  New  Englander  in  a  bargain, 
and  how  these  same  Scotch-Americans  by  birth, 
name  their  townships  still  after  the  cities  of  their 
thrifty  race.  It  was  all  as  new  and  delightful  as 
the  steady  ''scrunch"  of  the  snow-shoes  and  the 
dazzling  silence  of  the  hills. 

Beyond  the  very  furthest  range,  where  the  pines 
turn  to  a  faint  blue  haze  against  the  one  solitary 
peak — a  real  mountain  and  not  a  hill — showed  like 
a  gigantic  thumbnail  pointing  heavenward. 

"And  that's  Monadnock,"  said  the  man  from  the 
West;  "all  the  hills  have  Indian  names.  You  left 
Wantastiquet  on  your  right  coming  out  of  town." 

You   know   how   it   often   happens   that    a   word 

shuttles  in  and  out  of  many  years,  waking  all  sorts 

of  incongruous  associations.     I  had  met  Monadnock 

on  paper  in  a  shameless  parody  of  Emerson's  style, 

before  ever  style  or  verse  had  interest  for  me.     But 

the  word  stuck  because  of  a  rhyme,  in  which  one 

was 

.     .     .     crowned  coeval 
With  Monadnock's  crest, 
And  my  wings  extended 
Touch  the  East  and  West. 

Later  the  same  word,  pursued  on  the  same  principle 
as  that  blessed  one  Mesopotamia,  led  me  to  and 
through  Emerson,  up  to  his  poem  on  the  peak  itself — ■ 


i4        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

the  wise  old  giant  "busy  with  his  sky  affairs,"  who 
makes  us  sane  and  sober  and  free  from  little  things  if 
we  trust  him.  So  Monadnock  came  to  mean  every- 
thing that  was  helpful,  healing,  and  full  of  quiet,  and 
when  I  saw  him  half  across  New  Hampshire  he  did 
not  fail.  In  that  utter  stillness  a  hemlock  bough, 
overweighted  with  snow,  came  down  a  foot  or  two 
with  a  tired  little  sigh;  the  snow  slid  off  and  the 
little  branch  flew  nodding  back  to  its  fellows. 

For  the  honour  of  Monadnock  there  was  made 
that  afternoon  an  image  of  snow  of  Gautama  Buddha, 
something  too  squat  and  not  altogether  equal  on 
both  sides,  but  with  an  imperial  and  reposeful 
waist.  He  faced  towards  the  mountain,  and  pres- 
ently some  men  in  a  wood-sledge  came  up  the  road 
and  faced  him.  Now,  the  amazed  comments  of 
two  Vermont  farmers  on  the  nature  and  properties 
of  a  swag-bellied  god  are  worth  hearing.  They 
were  not  troubled  about  his  race,  for  he  was  aggres- 
sively white;  but  rounded  waists  seem  to  be  out  of 
fashion  in  Vermont.  At  least,  they  said  so,  with 
rare  and  curious  oaths. 

Next  day  all  the  idleness  and  trifling  were  drowned 
in  a  snowstorm  that  filled  the  hollows  of  the  hills 
with  whirling  blue  mist,  bowed  the  branches  of  the 
woods  till  you  ducked,  but  were  powdered  all  the 
same  when  you  drove  through,  and  wiped  out  the 
sleighing  tracks.  Mother  nature  is  beautifully  tidy 
if  you  leave  her  alone.     She  rounded  off  every  angle, 


IN  SIGHT  OF  MONADNOCK  15 

broke  down  every  scarp,  and  tucked  the  white 
bedclothes,  till  not  a  wrinkle  remained,  up  to  the 
chins  of  the  spruces  and  the  hemlocks  that  would 
not  go  to  sleep. 

"Now,"  said  the  man  of  the  West,  as  we  were 
driving  to  the  station,  and  alas!  to  New  York,  "all 
my  snow-tracks  are  gone;  but  when  that  snow  melts, 
a  week  hence  or  a  month  hence,  they'll  all  come  up 
again  and  show  where  I've  been." 

"Curious  idea,  is  it  not?  Imagine  a  murder 
committed  in  the  lonely  woods,  a  snowstorm  that 
covers  the  tracks  of  the  flying  man  before  the 
avenger  of  blood  has  buried  the  body,  and  then,  a 
week  later,  the  withdrawal  of  the  traitorous  snow, 
revealing  step  by  step  the  path  Cain  took — the  six- 
inch  dee-trail  of  his  snow-shoes — each  step  a  dark 
disk  on  the  white  till  the  very  end. 

There  is  so  much,  so  very  much  to  write,  if  it 
were  worth  while  about  that  queer  little  town  by  the 
railway  station,  with  its  life  running,  to  all  outward 
seeming,  as  smoothly  as  the  hack-coupes  on  their 
sleigh  mounting,  and  within  disturbed  by  the  hatreds 
and  troubles  and  jealousies  that  vex  the  minds  of  all 
but  the  gods.  For  instance — no,  it  is  better  to 
remember  the  lesson  Monadnock,  and  Emerson  has 
said,  "Zeus  hates  busy-bodies  and  people  who  do  too 
much." 

That  there  are  such  folk,  a  long  nasal  drawl 
across  Main  Street  attests.     A  farmer  is  unhitching 


i6        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

his  horses  from  a  post  opposite  a  store.  He  stands 
with  the  tie-rope  in  his  hand  and  gives  his  opinion 
to  his  neighbour  and  the  world  generally — "But 
them  there  Andersons,  they  ain't  got  no  notion  of 
etikwette!" 


Across  a  Continent 

It  is  not  easy  to  escape  from  a  big  city.  An  entire 
continent  was  waiting  to  be  traversed,  and,  for  that 
reason,  we  lingered  in  New  York  till  the  city  felt  so 
homelike  that  it  seemed  wrong  to  leave  it.  And 
further,  the  more  one  studied  it,  the  more  grotesquely 
bad  it  grew — bad  in  its  paving,  bad  in  its  streets,  bad 
in  its  street-police,  and  but  for  the  kindness  of  the 
tides  would  be  worse  than  bad  in  its  sanitary  ar- 
rangements. No  one  as  yet  has  approached  the 
management  of  New  York  in  a  proper  spirit;  that  is 
to  say,  regarding  it  as  the  shiftless  outcome  of 
squalid  barbarism  and  reckless  extravagance.  No 
one  is  likely  to  do  so,  because  reflections  on  the  long, 
narrow  pig-trough  are  construed  as  malevolent 
attacks  against  the  spirit  and  majesty  of  the  Great 
American  People,  and  lead  to  angry  comparisons. 
Yet,  if  all  the  streets  of  London  were  permanently 
up  and  all  the  lamps  permanently  down,  this  would 
not  prevent  the  New  York  streets  taken  in  a  lump 
from  being  first  cousins  to  a  Zanzibar  foreshore,  or 
kin  to  the  approaches  of  a  Zulu  kraal.  Gullies, 
holes,  ruts,  cobble-stones  awry,  kerbstones  rising 
from  two  to  six  inches  above  the  level  of  the  slatternly 

17 


18        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

pavement;  tram-lines  from  two  to  three  inches 
above  street  levels;  building  materials  scattered  half 
across  the  street;  lime,  boards,  cut  stone,  and  ash 
barrels  generally  and  generously  everywhere; 
wheeled  traffic  taking  its  chances,  dray  versus 
brougham,  at  cross  roads;  sway-backed  poles  whittled 
and  unpainted;  drunken  lamp-posts  with  twisted 
irons;  and,  lastly,  a  generous  scatter  of  filth  and 
more  mixed  stinks  than  the  winter  wind  can  carry 
away,  are  matters  which  can  be  considered  quite 
apart  from  the  "Spirit  of  Democracy"  or  "the 
future  of  this  great  and  growing  country."  In  any 
other  land  they  would  be  held  to  represent  slovenli- 
ness, sordidness,  and  want  of  capacity.  Here  it  is 
explained,  not  once  but  many  times,  that  they  show 
the  speed  at  which  the  city  has  grown  and  the 
enviable  indifference  of  her  citizens  to  matters  of 
detail.  One  of  these  days,  you  are  told,  everything 
will  be  taken  in  hand  and  put  straight.  The  un- 
virtuous  rulers  of  the  city  will  be  swept  away  by 
a  cyclone,  or  a  tornado,  or  something  big  and 
booming,  of  popular  indignation;  everybody  will 
unanimously  elect  the  right  man,  who  will  justly 
earn  the  enormous  salaries  that  are  at  present  being 
paid  to  inadequate  aliens  for  road  sweepings,  and 
all  will  be  well.  At  the  same  time  the  lawlessness 
ingrained  by  governors  among  the  governed  during 
the  last  thirty,  forty,  or  it  may  be  fifty  years;  the 
brutal  levity  of  the  public  conscience  in  regard  to 


ACROSS  A  CONTINENT  19 

public  duty;  the  toughening  and  suppling  of  public 
morals,  and  the  reckless  disregard  for  human  life, 
bred  by  impotent  laws  and  fostered  by  familiarity 
with  needless  accidents  and  criminal  neglect,  will 
miraculously  disappear.  If  the  laws  of  cause  and 
effect  that  control  even  the  freest  people  in  the 
world  say  otherwise,  so  much  the  worse  for  the  laws. 
America  makes  her  own.  Behind  her  stands  the 
ghost  of  the  most  bloody  war  of  the  century  caused 
in  a  peaceful  land  by  long  temporising  with  lawless- 
ness, by  letting  things  slide,  by  shiftlessness  and 
blind  disregard  for  all  save  the  material  need  of  the 
hour,  till  the  hour,  long  conceived  and  let  alone,  stood 
up  full  armed,  and  men  said,  "Here  is  an  unforeseen 
crisis,"  and  killed  each  other  in  the  name  of  God  for 
four  years. 

In  a  heathen  land  the  three  things  that  are  sup- 
posed to  be  the  pillars  of  moderately  decent  govern- 
ment are  regard  for  human  life,  justice  criminal  and 
civil,  as  far  as  it  lies  in  man  to  do  justice,  and  good 
roads.  In  this  Christian  city  they  think  lightly  of 
the  first — their  own  papers,  their  own  speech,  and 
their  own  actions  prove  it;  buy  and  sell  the  second 
at  a  price  openly  and  without  shame;  and  are, 
apparently,  content  to  do  without  the  third.  One 
would  almost  expect  racial  sense  of  humour  would 
stay  them  from  expecting  only  praise — slab,  lavish, 
and  slavish — from  the  stranger  within  their  gates. 
But  they  do  not.     If  he  holds  his  peace,  they  forge 


20        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

tributes  to  their  own  excellence  which  they  put  into 
his  mouth,  thereby  treating  their  own  land  which 
they  profess  to  honour  as  a  quack  treats  his  pills. 
If  he  speaks — but  you  shall  see  for  yourselves  what 
happens  then.  And  they  cannot  see  that  by  untruth 
and  invective  it  is  themselves  alone  that  they  injure. 
The  blame  of  their  city  evils  is  not  altogether 
with  the  gentlemen,  chiefly  of  foreign  extraction, 
who  control  the  city.  These  find  a  people  made  to 
their  hand — a  lawless  breed  ready  to  wink  at  one 
evasion  of  the  law  if  they  themselves  may  profit 
by  another,  and  in  their  rare  leisure  hours  content 
to  smile  over  the  details  of  a  clever  fraud.  Then, 
says  the  cultured  American,  "Give  us  time.  Give 
us  time,  and  we  shall  arrive. "  The  otherwise 
American,  who  is  aggressive,  straightway  proceeds 
to  thrust  a  piece  of  half-hanged  municipal  botch- 
work  under  the  nose  of  the  alien  as  a  sample  of 
perfected  effort.  There  is  nothing  more  delightful 
than  to  sit  for  a  strictly  limited  time  with  a  child 
who  tells  you  what  he  means  to  do  when  he  is  a  man; 
but  when  that  same  child,  loud-voiced,  insistent, 
unblushingly  eager  for  praise,  but  thin-skinned  as 
the  most  morbid  of  hobbledehoys,  stands  about  all 
your  ways  telling  you  the  same  story  in  the  same 
voice,  you  begin  to  yearn  for  something  made  and 
finished — say  Egypt  and  a  completely  dead  mummy. 
It  is  neither  seemly  nor  safe  to  hint  that  the  govern- 
ment of  the  largest  city  in  the  States  is  a  despotism 


ACROSS  A  CONTINENT  21 

of  the  alien  by  the  alien  for  the  alien,  tempered  with 
occasional  insurrections  of  the  decent  folk.  Only 
the  Chinaman  washes  the  dirty  linen  of  other  lands. 

St.  Paul,  Minnesota. 
Yes,  it  is  very  good  to  get  away  once  more  and 
pick  up  the  old  and  ever  fresh  business  of  the  vagrant, 
loafing  through  new  towns,  learned  in  the  manners  of 
dogs,  babies,  and  perambulators  half  the  world  over, 
and  tracking  the  seasons  by  the  up-growth  of  flowers 
in  stranger-people's  gardens.  St.  Paul,  standing  at 
the  barn-door  of  the  Dakota  and  Minnesota  granaries, 
is  all  things  to  all  men  except  to  Minneapolis,  eleven 
miles  away,  whom  she  hates  and  by  whom  she  is 
patronised.  She  calls  herself  the  capital  of  the 
North-West,  the  new  North-West,  and  her  citizens 
wear,  not  only  the  tall  silk  hat  of  trade,  but  the  soft 
slouch  of  the  West.  She  talks  in  another  tongue 
than  the  New  Yorker,  and — sure  sign  that  we  are 
far  across  the  Continent — her  papers  argue  with  the 
San  Francisco  ones  over  rate  wars  and  the  competi- 
tion of  railway  companies.  St.  Paul  has  been 
established  many  years,  and  if  one  were  reckless 
enough  to  go  down  to  the  business  quarters  one 
would  hear  all  about  her  and  more  also.  But  the 
residential  parts  of  the  town  are  the  crown  of  it, 
in  common  with  scores  of  other  cities;  broad-crowned 
suburbs — using  the  word  in  the  English  sense — that 
make  the  stranger  jealous.     You  get  here  what  you 


22        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

do  not  get  in  the  city — well-paved  or  asphalted 
roads,  planted  with  trees,  and  trim  side-walks, 
studded  with  houses  of  individuality,  not  boorishly 
fenced  off  from  each  other,  but  standing  each  on  its 
plot  of  well-kept  turf  running  down  to  the  pavement. 
It  is  always  Sunday  in  these  streets  of  a  morning. 
The  cable-car  has  taken  the  men  down  town  to 
business,  the  children  are  at  school,  and  the  big 
dogs,  three  and  a  third  to  each  absent  child,  lie 
nosing  the  winter-killed  grass  and  wondering  when 
the  shoots  will  make  it  possible  for  a  gentleman  to 
take  his  spring  medicine.  In  the  afternoon,  the 
children  on  tricycles  stagger  up  and  down  the 
asphalt  with  due  proportion  of  big  dogs  at  each 
wheel;  the  cable-cars  coming  up  hill  begin  to  drop 
the  men  each  at  his  own  door — the  door  of  the 
house  that  he  builded  for  himself  (though  the 
architect  incited  him  to  that  vile  little  attic  tower 
and  useless  loggia),  and,  naturally  enough,  twilight 
brings  the  lovers  walking  two  by  two  along  the 
very  quiet  ways.  You  can  tell  from  the  houses 
almost  the  exact  period  at  which  they  were  built, 
whether  in  the  jig-saw  days,  when  it  behoved  re- 
spectability to  use  unlovely  turned  rails  and  pierced 
gable-ends,  or  during  the  Colonial  craze,  which 
means  white  paint  and  fluted  pillars,  or  in  the  latest 
domestic  era,  a  most  pleasant  mixture,  that  is,  of 
stained  shingles,  hooded  dormer  windows,  cunning 
verandahs,  and  recessed  doors.     Seeing  these  things, 


ACROSS  A  CONTINENT  23 

one  begins  to  understand  why  the  Americans  visiting 
England  are  impressed  with  the  old  and  not  with  the 
new.  He  is  not  much  more  than  a  hundred  years 
ahead  of  the  English  in  design,  comfort,  and  economy, 
and  (this  is  most  important)  labour-saving  appli- 
ances in  his  house.  From  Newport  to  San  Diego 
you  will  find  the  same  thing  to-day. 

Last  tribute  of  respect  and  admiration.  One 
little  brown  house  at  the  end  of  an  avenue  is  shut- 
tered down,  and  a  doctor's  buggy  stands  before  it. 
On  the  door  a  large  blue  and  white  label  says — 
"Scarlet  Fever."  Oh,  most  excellent  municipality 
of  St.  Paul!  It  is  because  of  these  little  things,  and 
not  rowdying  and  racketing  in  public  places,  that  a 
nation  becomes  great  and  free  and  honoured.  In 
the  cars  to-night  they  will  be  talking  wheat,  girding 
at  Minneapolis,  and  sneering  at  Duluth's  demand  for 
twenty  feet  of  water  from  Duluth  to  the  Atlantic — 
matters  of  no  great  moment  compared  with  those 
streets  and  that  label. 

A  Day  later. 
"Five  days  ago  there  wasn't  a  foot  of  earth  to  see. 
It  was  just  naturally  covered  with  snow,"  says  the 
conductor  standing  in  the  rear  car  of  the  Great 
Northern  train.  He  speaks  as  though  the  snow 
had  hidden  something  priceless.  Here  is  the  view: 
One  railway  track  and  a  line  of  staggering  telegraph- 
poles  ending  in  a  dot  and  a  blur  on  the  horizon.     To 


24        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

the  left  and  right,  a  sweep  as  it  were  of  the  sea,  one 
huge  plain  of  corn-land  waiting  for  the  spring,  dotted 
at  rare  intervals  with  wooden  farmhouses,  patent 
self-reapers  and  binders  almost  as  big  as  the  houses, 
ricks  left  over  from  last  year's  abundant  harvest,  and 
mottled  here  and  there  with  black  patches  to  show 
that  the  early  ploughing  had  begun.  The  snow  lies 
in  a  last  few  streaks  and  whirls  by  the  track;  from 
skyline  to  skyline  is  black  loam  and  prairie  grass  so 
dead  that  it  seems  as  though  no  one  year's  sun 
would  waken  it.  This  is  the  granary  of  the  land 
where  the  farmer  who  bears  the  burdens  of  the 
State — and  who,  therefore,  ascribes  last  year's 
bumper  crop  to  the  direct  action  of  the  M'Kinley 
Bill — has,  also,  to  bear  the  ghastly  monotony  of 
earth  and  sky.  He  keeps  his  head,  having  many 
things  to  attend  to,  but  his  wife  sometimes  goes  mad 
as  the  women  do  in  Vermont.  There  is  little  variety 
in  Nature's  big  wheat-field.  They  say  that  when  the 
corn  is  in  the  ear  the  wind,  chasing  shadows  across  it 
for  miles  on  miles,  breeds  as  it  were  a  vertigo  in 
those  who  must  look  and  cannot  turn  their  eyes 
away.  And  they  tell  a  nightmare  story  of  a  woman 
who  lived  with  her  husband  for  fourteen  years  at  an 
army  post  in  just  such  a  land  as  this.  Then  they 
were  transferred  to  West  Point,  among  the  hills  over 
the  Hudson,  and  she  came  to  New  York,  but  the 
terror  of  the  tall  houses  grew  upon  her  and  grew  till 
she  went  down  with  brain-fever,  and  the  dread  of  her 


ACROSS  A  CONTINENT  25 

delirium  was  that  the  terrible  things  would  topple 
down  and  crush  her.     That  is  a  true  story. 

They  work  for  harvest  with  steam-ploughs  here. 
How  could  mere  horses  face  the  endless  furrows? 
And  they  attack  the  earth  with  tooth-cogged  and 
spiked  engines  that  would  be  monstrous  in  the  shops, 
but  here  are  only  speckles  on  the  yellow  grass.  Even 
the  locomotive  is  cowed.  A  train  of  freight  cars  is 
passing  along  a  line  that  comes  out  of  the  blue  and 
goes  on  till  it  meets  the  blue  again.  Elsewhere  the 
train  would  move  off  with  a  joyous,  vibrant  roar. 
Here  it  steals  away  down  the  vista  of  the  telegraph- 
poles  with  an  awed  whisper — steals  away  and  sinks 
into  the  soil. 

Then  comes  a  town  deep  in  black  mud — a  straggly, 
inch-thick  plank  town,  with  dull  red  grain  elevators. 
The  open  country  refuses  to  be  subdued  even  for  a 
few  score  rods.  Each  street  ends  in  the  illimitable 
open,  and  it  is  as  though  the  whole  houseless,  outside 
earth  were  racing  through  it.  Towards  evening, 
under  a  gray  sky,  flies  by  an  unframed  picture  of 
desolation.  In  the  foreground  a  farm  waggon  almost 
axle  deep  in  mud,  the  mire  dripping  from  the  slow 
turning  wheels  as  the  man  flogs  the  horses.  Behind 
him  on  a  knoll  of  sodden  soggy  grass,  fenced  off  by 
raw  rails  from  the  landscape  at  large,  are  a  knot  of 
utterly  uninterested  citizens  who  have  flogged 
horses  and  raised  wheat  in  their  time,  but  to-day  lie 
under    chipped    and    weather-worn    wooden    head- 


26        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

stones.  Surely  burial  here  must  be  more  awful  to 
the  newly  made  ghost  than  burial  at  sea! 

There  is  more  snow  as  we  go  north,  and  Nature  is 
hard  at  work  breaking  up  the  ground  for  the  spring. 
The  thaw  has  filled  every  depression  with  a  sullen 
gray-black  spate,  and  out  on  the  levels  the  water 
lies  six  inches  deep,  in  stretch  upon  stretch,  as  far  as 
the  eye  can  reach.  Every  culvert  is  full,  and  the 
broken  ice  clicks  against  the  wooden  pier-guards  of 
the  bridges.  Somewhere  in  this  flatness  there  is  a 
refreshing  jingle  of  spurs  along  the  cars,  and  a  man 
of  the  Canadian  Mounted  Police  swaggers  through 
with  his  black  fur  cap  and  yellow  tab  aside,  his  well- 
fitting  overalls  and  his  better  set-up  back.  One 
wants  to  shake  hands  with  him  because  he  is  clean 
and  does  not  slouch  nor  spit,  trims  his  hair,  and 
walks  as  a  man  should.  Then  a  custom-house 
officer  wants  to  know  too  much  about  cigars,  whisky, 
and  Florida  water.  Her  Majesty,  the  Queen  of 
England  and  Empress  of  India  has  us  in  her  keeping. 
Nothing  has  happened  to  the  landscape,  and  Winni- 
peg, which  is,  as  it  were,  a  centre  of  distribution  for 
emigrants,  stands  up  to  her  knees  in  the  water  of  the 
thaw.  The  year  has  turned  in  earnest,  and  some- 
body is  talking  about  the  "first  ice-shove"  at 
Montreal,  1300  or  1400  miles  east. 

They  will  not  run  trains  on  Sunday  at  Montreal, 
and  this  is  Wednesday.  Therefore,  the  Canadian 
Pacific  makes  up  a  train  for  Vancouver  at  Winnipeg. 


ACROSS  A  CONTINENT  27 

This  is  worth  remembering,  because  few  people 
travel  in  that  train,  and  you  escape  any  rush  of 
tourists  running  westward  to  catch  the  Yokohama 
boat.  The  car  is  your  own,  and  with  it  the  service  of 
the  porter.  Our  porter,  seeing  things  were  slack, 
beguiled  himself  with  a  guitar,  which  gave  a  tri- 
umphal and  festive  touch  to  the  journey,  ridiculously 
out  of  keeping  with  the  view.  For  eight-and- 
twenty  long  hours  did  the  bored  locomotive  trail  us 
through  a  flat  and  hairy  land,  powdered,  ribbed  and 
speckled  with  snow,  small  snow  that  drives  like  dust 
shot  in  the  "wind — the  land  of  Assiniboia.  Now  and 
again,  for  no  obvious  reason  to  the  outside  mind, 
there  was  a  town.  Then  the  towns  gave  place  to 
"section  so  and  so";  then  there  were  trails  of  the 
buffalo,  where  he  once  walked  in  his  pride;  then  there 
was  a  mound  of  white  bones,  supposed  to  belong  to 
the  said  buffalo,  and  then  the  wilderness  took  up  the 
tale.  Some  of  it  was  good  ground,  but  most  of  it 
seemed  to  have  fallen  by  the  wayside,  and  the  tedium 
of  it  was  eternal. 

At  twilight — an  unearthly  sort  of  twilight — there 
came  another  curious  picture.  Thus — a  wooden 
town  shut  in  among  low,  treeless,  rolling  ground,  a 
calling  river  that  ran  unseen  between  scarped  banks; 
barracks  of  a  detachment  of  mounted  police,  a  little 
cemetery  where  ex-troopers  rested,  a  painfully  formal 
public  garden  with  pebble  paths  and  foot-high  fir 
trees,  a  few  lines  of  railway  buildings,  white  women 


28        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

walking  up  and  down  in  the  bitter  cold  with  their 
bonnets  off,  some  Indians  in  red  blanketing  with 
buffalo  horns  for  sale  trailing  along  the  platform,  and, 
not  ten  yards  from  the  track,  a  cinnamon  bear  and  a 
young  grizzly  standing  up  with  extended  arms  in 
their  pens  and  begging  for  food.  It  was  strange 
beyond  anything  that  this  bald  telling  can  suggest — 
opening  a  door  into  a  new  world.  The  only  common- 
place thing  about  the  spot  was  its  name — Medicine 
Hat,  which  struck  me  instantly  as  the  only  possible 
name  such  a  town  could  carry.  This  is  that  place 
which  later  became  a  town;  but  I  had  seen  it  three 
years  before  when  it  was  even  smaller  and  was 
reached  by  me  in  a  freight-car,  ticket  unpaid  for. 
That  next  morning  brought  us  the  Canadian 
Pacific  Railway  as  one  reads  about  it.  No  pen  of 
man  could  do  justice  to  the  scenery  there.  The 
guide-books  struggle  desperately  with  descriptions 
adapted  for  summer  reading  of  rushing  cascades, 
lichened  rocks,  waving  pines,  and  snow-capped 
mountains;  but  in  April  these  things  are  not  there. 
The  place  is  locked  up — dead  as  a  frozen  corpse. 
The  mountain  torrent  is  a  boss  of  palest  emerald  ice 
against  the  dazzle  of  the  snow;  the  pine-stumps  are 
capped  and  hooded  with  gigantic  mushrooms  of 
snow;  the  rocks  are  overlaid  five  feet  deep;  the  rocks, 
the  fallen  trees,  and  the  lichens  together,  and  the 
dumb  white  lips  curl  up  to  the  track  cut  in  the  side 
of  the  mountain,  and  grin  there  fanged  with  gigantic 


ACROSS  A  CONTINENT  29 

icicles.  You  may  listen  in  vain  when  the  train 
stops  for  the  least  sign  of  breath  or  power  among  the 
hills.  The  snow  has  smothered  the  rivers,  and  the 
great  looping  trestles  run  over  what  might  be  a 
lather  of  suds  in  a  huge  washtub.  The  old  snow 
near  by  is  blackened  and  smirched  with  the  smoke  of 
locomotives,  and  its  dullness  is  grateful  to  aching 
eyes.  But  the  men  who  live  upon  the  line  have  no 
consideration  for  these  things.  At  a  halting-place 
in  a  gigantic  gorge  walled  in  by  the  snows,  one  of 
them  reels  from  a  tiny  saloon  into  the  middle  of  the 
track  where  half-a-dozen  dogs  are  chasing  a  pig  off 
the  metals.  He  is  beautifully  and  eloquently  drunk. 
He  sings,  waves  his  hands,  and  collapses  behind  a 
shunting  engine,  while  four  of  the  loveliest  peaks 
that  the  Almighty  ever  moulded  look  down  upon 
him.  The  landslide  that  should  have  wiped  that 
saloon  into  kindlings  has  missed  its  mark  and  has 
struck  a  few  miles  down  the  line.  One  of  the  hill- 
sides moved  a  little  in  dreaming  of  the  spring  and 
caught  a  passing  freight  train.  Our  cars  grind 
cautiously  by,  for  the  wrecking  engine  has  only  just 
come  through.  The  deceased  engine  is  standing  on 
its  head  in  soft  earth  thirty  or  forty  feet  down  the 
slide,  and  two  long  cars  loaded  with  shingles  are 
dropped  carelessly  atop  of  it.  It  looks  so  marvel- 
lously like  a  toy  train  flung  aside  by  a  child,  that  one 
cannot  realise  what  it  means  till  a  voice  cries,  "Any 
one   killed?'      The    answer   comes   back,    "No;   all 


3o        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

jumped";  and  you  perceive  with  a  sense  of  personal 
insult  that  this  slovenliness  of  the  mountain  is  an 
affair  which  may  touch  your  own  sacred  self.  In 
which  case  .  .  .  but  the  train  is  out  on  a 
trestle,  into  a  tunnel,  and  out  on  a  trestle  again.  It 
was  here  that  every  one  began  to  despair  of  the 
line  when  it  was  under  construction,  because  there 
seemed  to  be  no  outlet.  But  a  man  came,  as  a  man 
always  will,  and  put  a  descent  thus  and  a  curve  in 
this  manner,  and  a  trestle  so;  and  behold,  the  line 
went  on.  It  is  in  this  place  that  we  heard  the  story 
of  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railway  told  as  men  tell  a 
many  times  repeated  tale,  with  exaggerations  and 
omissions,  but  an  imposing  tale,  none  the  less.  In 
the  beginning,  when  they  would  federate  the  Domin- 
ion of  Canada,  it  was  British  Columbia  who  saw 
objections  to  coming  in,  and  the  Prime  Minister  of 
those  days  promised  it  for  a  bribe,  an  iron  band 
between  tidewater  and  tidewater  that  should  not 
break.  Then  everybody  laughed,  which  seems  nec- 
essary to  the  health  of  most  big  enterprises,  and 
while  they  were  laughing,  things  were  being  done. 
The  Canadian  Pacific  Railway  was  given  a  bit  of  a 
line  here  and  a  bit  of  a  line  there  and  almost  as  much 
land  as  it  wanted,  and  the  laughter  was  still  going 
on  when  the  last  spike  was  driven  between  east  and 
west,  at  the  very  place  where  the  drunken  man 
sprawled  behind  the  engine,  and  the  iron  band  ran 
from  tideway  to  tideway  as  the  Premier  said,  and 


ACROSS  A  CONTINENT  31 

people  in  England  said  "How  interesting,"  and 
proceeded  to  talk  about  the  "bloated  Army 
estimates."  Incidentally,  the  man  who  told  us — he 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  Canadian  Pacific  Rail- 
way— explained  how  it  paid  the  line  to  encourage 
immigration,  and  told  of  the  arrival  at  Winnipeg  of  a 
train-load  of  Scotch  crofters  on  a  Sunday.  They 
wanted  to  stop  then  and  there  for  the  Sabbath — they 
and  all  the  little  stock  they  had  brought  with  them. 
It  was  the  Winnipeg  agent  who  had  to  go  among 
them  arguing  (he  was  Scotch  too,  and  they  could  not 
quite  understand  it)  on  the  impropriety  of  dislocating 
the  company's  traffic.  So  their  own  minister  held  a 
service  in  the  station,  and  the  agent  gave  them  a 
good  dinner,  cheering  them  in  Gaelic,  at  which  they 
wept,  and  they  went  on  to  settle  at  Moosomin,  where 
they  lived  happily  ever  afterwards.  Of  the  man- 
ager, the  head  of  the  line  from  Montreal  to  Van- 
couver, our  companion  spoke  with  reverence  that 
was  almost  awe.  That  manager  lived  in  a  palace  at 
Montreal,  but  from  time  to  time  he  would  sally 
forth  in  his  special  car  and  whirl  over  his  3000  miles 
at  50  miles  an  hour.  The  regulation  pace  is  twenty- 
two,  but  he  sells  his  neck  with  his  head.  Few 
drivers  cared  for  the  honour  of  taking  him  over  the 
road.  A  mysterious  man  he  was,  who  "carried  the 
profile  of  the  line  in  his  head,"  and,  more  than  that, 
knew  intimately  the  possibilities  of  back  country 
which  he  had  never  seen  nor  travelled  over.     There 


32        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

is  always  one  such  man  on  every  line.  You  can 
hear  similar  tales  from  drivers  on  the  Great  Western 
in  England  or  Eurasian  stationmasters  on  the  big 
North-Western  in  India.  Then  a  fellow-traveller 
spoke,  as  many  others  had  done,  on  the  possibilities 
of  Canadian  union  with  the  United  States;  and  his 
language  was  not  the  language  of  Mr.  Goldwin 
Smith.  It  was  brutal  in  places.  Summarised  it 
came  to  a  pronounced  objection  to  having  anything 
to  do  with  a  land  rotten  before  it  was  ripe,  a  land 
with  seven  million  negroes  as  yet  unwelded  into  the 
population,  their  race-type  unevolved,  and  rather 
more  than  crude  notions  on  murder,  marriage,  and 
honesty.  "We've  picked  up  their  way  of  politics," 
he  said  mournfully.  "That  comes  of  living  next 
door  to  them;  but  I  don't  think  we're  anxious  to 
mix  up  with  their  other  messes.  They  say  they 
don't  want  us.  They  keep  on  saying  it.  There's  a 
nigger  on  the  fence  somewhere,  or  they  wouldn't  lie 
about  it." 

"But  does  it  follow  that  they  are  lying?" 
"Sure.     I've   lived   among   'em.     They  can't  go 
straight.     There's  some  dam'  fraud  at  the  back  of 


it. 


From  this  belief  he  would  not  be  shaken.  He  had 
lived  among  them — perhaps  had  been  bested  in 
trade.  Let  them  keep  themselves  and  their  manners 
and  customs  to  their  own  side  of  the  line. 

This  is  very  sad  and  chilling.     It  seemed  quite 


ACROSS  A  CONTINENT  33 

otherwise  in  New  York,  where  Canada  was  repre- 
sented as  a  ripe  plum  ready  to  fall  into  Uncle  Sam's 
mouth  when  he  should  open  it.  The  Canadian  has 
no  special  love  for  England — the  Mother  of  Colonies 
has  a  wonderful  gift  for  alienating  the  affections  of 
her  own  household  by  neglect — but,  perhaps,  he 
loves  his  own  country.  We  ran  out  of  the  snow 
through  mile  upon  mile  of  snow-sheds,  braced  with 
twelve-inch  beams,  and  planked  with  two-inch 
planking.  In  one  place  a  snow  slide  had  caught  just 
the  edge  of  a  shed  and  scooped  it  away  as  a  knife 
scoops  cheese.  High  up  the  hills  men  had  built 
diverting  barriers  to  turn  the  drifts,  but  the  drifts  had 
swept  over  everything,  and  lay  five  deep  on  the 
top  of  the  sheds.  When  we  woke  it  was  on  the 
banks  of  the  muddy  Fraser  River  and  the  spring  was 
hurrying  to  meet  us.  The  snow  had  gone;  the  pink 
blossoms  of  the  wild  currant  were  open,  the  budding 
alders  stood  misty  green  against  the  blue  black  of  the 
pines,  the  brambles  on  the  burnt  stumps  were  in 
tenderest  leaf,  and  every  moss  on  every  stone  was 
this  year's  work,  fresh  from  the  hand  of  the  Maker. 
The  land  opened  into  clearings  of  soft  black  earth. 
At  one  station  a  hen  had  laid  an  egg  and  was  telling 
the  world  about  it.  The  world  answered  with  a 
breath  of  real  spring — spring  that  flooded  the  stuffy 
car  and  drove  us  out  on  the  platform  to  snuff  and 
sing  and  rejoice  and  pluck  squashy  green  marsh- 
flags  and  throw  them  at  the  colts,  and  shout  at  the 


34        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

wild  duck  that  rose  from  a  jewel-green  lakelet. 
God  be  thanked  that  in  travel  one  can  follow  the 
year!  This,  my  spring,  I  lost  last  November  in 
New  Zealand.  Now  I  shall  hold  her  fast  through 
Japan  and  the  summer  into  New  Zealand  again. 

Here  are  the  waters  of  the  Pacific,  and  Vancouver 
(completely  destitute  of  any  decent  defences)  grown 
out  of  all  knowledge  in  the  last  three  years.  At  the 
railway  wharf,  with  never  a  gun  to  protect  her, 
lies  the  Empress  of  India — the  Japan  boat — and 
what  more  auspicious  name  could  you  wish  to  find 
at  the  end  of  one  of  the  strong  chains  of  empire? 


The  Edge  of  the  East 

The  mist  was  clearing  off  Yokohama  harbour  and  a 
hundred  junks  had  their  sails  hoisted  for  the  morning 
breeze,  so  that  the  veiled  horizon  was  stippled  with 
square  blurs  of  silver.  An  English  man-of-war 
showed  blue-white  on  the  haze,  so  new  was  the 
daylight,  and  all  the  water  lay  out  as  smooth  as  the 
inside  of  an  oyster  shell.  Two  children  in  blue  and 
white,  their  tanned  limbs  pink  in  the  fresh  air, 
sculled  a  marvellous  boat  of  lemon-hued  wood,  and 
that  was  our  fairy  craft  to  the  shore  across  the  still- 
ness and  the  mother  o'  pearl  levels. 

There  are  ways  and  ways  of  entering  Japan.  The 
best  is  to  descend  upon  it  from  America  and  the 
Pacific — from  the  barbarians  and  the  deep  sea. 
Coming  from  the  East,  the  blaze  of  India  and  the 
insolent  tropical  vegetation  of  Singapore  dull  the 
eye  to  half-colours  and  little  tones.  It  is  at  Bombay 
that  the  smell  of  All  Asia  boards  the  ship  miles  off 
shore,  and  holds  the  passenger's  nose  till  he  is  clear 
of  Asia  again.  That  is  a  violent  and  aggressive 
smell,  apt  to  prejudice  the  stranger,  but  kin  none  the 
less  to  the  gentle  and  insinuating  flavour  that  stole 
across  the  light  airs  of  the  daybreak  when  the  fairy 

35 


3  6        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

boat  went  to  shore — a  smell  of  very  clean  new 
wood;  split  bamboo,  wood-smoke,  damp  earth,  and 
the  things  that  people  who  are  not  white  people  eat — 
a  homelike  and  comforting  smell.  Then  followed  on 
shore  the  sound  of  an  Eastern  tongue,  that  is  beauti- 
ful or  not  as  you  happen  to  know  it.  The  Western 
races  have  many  languages,  but  a  crowd  of  Europeans 
heard  through  closed  doors  talk  with  the  Western 
pitch  and  cadence.  So  it  is  with  the  East.  A  line 
of  jinrickshaw  coolies  sat  in  the  sun  discoursing  to 
each  other,  and  it  was  as  though  they  were  welcom- 
ing a  return  in  speech  that  the  listener  must  know  as 
well  as  English.  They  talked  and  they  talked,  but 
the  ghosts  of  familiar  words  would  not  grow  any 
clearer  till  presently  the  Smell  came  down  the  open 
streets  again,  saying  that  this  was  the  East  where 
nothing  matters,  and  trifles  old  as  the  Tower  of 
Babel  mattered  less  than  nothing,  and  that  there 
were  old  acquaintances  waiting  at  every  corner 
beyond  the  township.  Great  is  the  Smell  of  the 
East!  Railways,  telegraphs,  docks,  and  gun-boats 
cannot  banish  it,  and  it  will  endure  till  the  railways 
are  dead.  He  who  has  not  smelt  that  smell  has 
never  lived. 

Three  years  ago  Yokohama  was  sufficiently 
Europeanised  in  its  shops  to  suit  the  worst  and 
wickedest  taste.  To-day  it  is  still  worse  if  you  keep 
to  the  town  limits.  Ten  steps  beyond  into  the 
fields  all  the  civilisation  stops  exactly  as  it  does  in 


THE  EDGE  OF  THE  EAST  37 

another  land  a  few  thousand  miles  further  West. 
The  globe-trotting  millionaires,  anxious  to  spend 
money,  with  a  nose  on  whatever  caught  their  liber- 
tine fancies,  had  explained  to  us  aboard-ship  that 
they  came  to  Japan  in  haste,  advised  by  their  guide- 
books to  do  so,  lest  the  land  should  be  suddenly 
civilised  between  steamer-sailing  and  steamer-sailing. 
When  they  touched  land  they  ran  away  to  the 
curio  shops  to  buy  things  which  are  prepared  for 
them — mauve  and  magenta  and  blue  vitriol  things. 
By  this  time  they  have  a  "Murray"  under  one  arm 
and  an  electric  blue  eagle  with  a  copperas  beak  and 
a  yellow  " E  pluribiis  unum"  embroidered  on  apple- 
green  silk,  under  the  other. 

We,  being  wise,  sit  in  a  garden  that  is  not  ours, 
but  belongs  to  a  gentleman  in  slate-coloured  silk, 
who,  solely  for  the  sake  of  the  picture,  condescends 
to  work  as  a  gardener,  in  which  employ  he  is  sweeping 
delicately  a  welt  of  fallen  cherry  blossoms  from 
under  an  azalea,  aching  to  burst  into  bloom.  Steep 
stone  steps,  of  the  colour  that  nature  ripens  through 
long  winters,  lead  up  to  this  garden  by  way  of  clumps 
of  bamboo  grass.  You  see  the  Smell  was  right 
when  it  talked  of  meeting  old  friends.  Half-a- 
dozen  blue-black  pines  are  standing  akimbo  against 
a  real  sky — not  a  fog-blur  nor  a  cloud-bank,  nor  a 
gray  dish-clout  wrapped  round  the  sun — but  a  blue 
sky.  A  cherry  tree  on  a  slope  below  them  throws  up 
a  wave  of  blossom  that  breaks  all  creamy  white 


294048 


38        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

against  their  feet,  and  a  clump  of  willow  trail  their 
palest  green  shoots  in  front  of  all.  The  sun  sends 
for  an  ambassador  through  the  azalea  bushes  a 
lordly  swallow-tailed  butterfly  and  his  squire,  very 
like  the  flitting  "chalk-blue"  of  the  English  downs. 
The  warmth  of  the  East,  that  goes  through,  not  over, 
the  lazy  body,  is  added  to  the  light  of  the  East — the 
splendid  lavish  light  that  clears  but  does  not  bewilder 
the  eye.  Then  the  new  leaves  of  the  spring  wink 
like  fat  emeralds  and  the  loaded  branches  of  cherry- 
bloom  grow  transparent  and  glow  as  a  hand  glows 
held  up  against  flame.  Little,  warm  sighs  come  up 
from  the  moist,  warm  earth,  and  the  fallen  petals  stir 
on  the  ground,  turn  over,  and  go  to  sleep  again. 
Outside,  beyond  the  foliage,  where  the  sunlight  lies 
on  the  slate-coloured  roofs,  the  ridged  rice-fields 
beyond  the  roofs,  and  the  hills  beyond  the  rice-fields, 
is  all  Japan — only  all  Japan;  and  this  that  they  call 
the  old  French  Legation  is  the  Garden  of  Eden  that 
most  naturally  dropped  down  here  after  the  Fall. 
For  some  small  hint  of  the  beauties  to  be  shown  later 
there  is  the  roof  of  a  temple,  ridged  and  fluted  with 
dark  tiles,  flung  out  casually  beyond  the  corner  of  the 
blufF  on  which  the  garden  stands.  Any  other  curve 
of  the  eaves  would  not  have  consorted  with  the 
sweep  of  the  pine  branches;  therefore,  this  curve  was 
made,  and  being  made,  was  perfect.  The  congrega- 
tion of  the  globe-trotters  are  in  the  hotel,  scuffling 
for  guides,   in  order  that  they  may  be  shown  the 


THE  EDGE  OF  THE  EAST  39 

sights  of  Japan,  which  is  all  one  sight.  They  must 
go  to  Tokio,  they  must  go  to  Nikko;  they  must 
surely  see  all  that  is  to  be  seen,  and  then  write  home 
to  their  barbarian  families  that  they  are  getting  used 
to  the  sight  of  bare,  brown  legs.  Before  this  day  is 
ended,  they  will  all,  thank  goodness,  have  splitting 
headaches  and  burnt-out  eyes.  It  is  better  to  lie 
still  and  hear  the  grass  grow — to  soak  in  the  heat  and 
the  smell  and  the  sounds  and  the  sights  that  come 
unasked. 

Our  garden  overhangs  the  harbour,  and  by  pushing 
aside  one  branch  we  look  down  upon  a  heavy- 
sterned  fishing-boat,  the  straw-gold  mats  of  the 
deck-house  pushed  back  to  show  the  perfect  order 
and  propriety  of  the  housekeeping  that  is  going 
forward.  The  father-fisher,  sitting  frog-fashion,  is 
poking  at  a  tiny  box  full  of  charcoal,  and  the  light, 
white  ash  is  blown  back  into  the  face  of  a  largish 
Japanese  doll,  price  two  shillings  and  threepence  in 
Bayswater.  The  doll  wakes,  turns  into  a  Japanese 
baby  something  more  valuable  than  money  could 
buy — a  baby  with  a  shaven  head  and  aimless  legs. 
It  crawls  to  the  thing  in  the  polished  brown  box,  is 
picked  up  just  as  it  is  ready  to  eat  live  coals,  and  is 
set  down  behind  a  thwart,  where  it  drums  upon  a 
bucket,  addressing  the  firebox  from  afar.  Half-a- 
dozen  cherry  blossoms  slide  off  a  bough,  and  waver 
down  to  the  water  close  to  the  Japanese  doll,  who  in 
another  minute  will  be  overside  in  pursuit  of  these 


4o        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

miracles.  The  father-fisher  has  it  by  the  pink  hind 
leg,  and  this  time  it  is  tucked  away,  all  but  the  top- 
knot, out  of  sight  among  umber  nets  and  sepia 
cordage.  Being  an  Oriental  it  makes  no  protest, 
and  the  boat  scuds  out  to  join  the  little  fleet  in  the 
offing. 

Then  two  sailors  of  a  man-of-war  come  along  the 
sea  face,  lean  over  the  canal  below  the  garden,  spit, 
and  roll  away.  The  sailor  in  port  is  the  only  superior 
man.  To  him  all  matters  rare  and  curious  are 
either  "them  things"  or  "them  other  things."  He 
does  not  hurry  himself,  he  does  not  seek  adjectives 
other  than  those  which  custom  puts  into  his  mouth 
for  all  occasions;  but  the  beauty  of  life  penetrates  his 
being  insensibly  till  he  gets  drunk,  falls  foul  of  the 
local  policeman,  smites  him  into  the  nearest  canal, 
and  disposes  of  the  question  of  treaty  revision  with  a 
hiccup.  All  the  same,  Jack  says  that  he  has  a 
grievance  against  the  policeman,  who  is  paid  a  dollar 
for  every  strayed  seaman  he  brings  up  to  the  Consular 
Courts  for  overstaying  his  leave,  and  so  forth. 
Jack  says  that  the  little  fellows  deliberately  hinder 
him  from  getting  back  to  his  ship,  and  then  with 
devilish  art  and  craft  of  wrestling  tricks — "there 
are  about  a  hundred  of  'em,  and  they  can  throw  you 
with  every  qualified  one" — carry  him  to  justice. 
Now  when  Jack  is  softened  with  drink  he  does  not 
tell  lies.  This  is  his  grievance,  and  he  says  that 
them   blanketed   consuls   ought   to   know.     "They 


THE  EDGE  OF  THE  EAST  41 

plays  into  each  other's  hands,  and  stops  you  at 
the  Hatoba" — the  policemen  do.  The  visitor  who 
is  neither  a  seaman  nor  drunk,  cannot  swear  to  the 
truth  of  this,  or  indeed  anything  else.  He  moves 
not  only  among  fascinating  scenes  and  a  lovely 
people  but,  as  he  is  sure  to  find  out  before  he  has  been 
a  day  ashore,  between  stormy  questions.  Three 
years  ago  there  were  no  questions  that  were  not 
going  to  be  settled  off-hand  in  a  blaze  of  paper 
lanterns.  The  Constitution  was  new.  It  has  a 
gray,  pale  cover  with  a  chrysanthemum  at  the  back, 
and  a  Japanese  told  me  then,  "Now  we  have  Con- 
stitution same  as  other  countries,  and  so  it  is  all 
right.     Now  we  are  quite  civilised  because  of  Con- 


stitution." 


A  perfectly  irrelevant  story  comes  to  mind  here. 
Do  you  know  that  in  Madeira  once  they  had  a 
revolution  which  lasted  just  long  enough  for  the 
national  poet  to  compose  a  national  anthem,  and 
then  was  put  down?  All  that  is  left  of  the  revolt 
now  is  the  song  that  you  hear  on  the  twangling 
nachettes,  the  baby-banjoes,  of  a  moonlight  night 
under  the  banana  fronds  at  the  back  of  Funchal. 
And  the  high-pitched  nasal  refrain  of  it  is  "Consti- 
tuci-oww/" 

Since  that  auspicious  date  it  seems  that  the 
questions  have  impertinently  come  up,  and  the  first 
and  the  last  of  them  is  that  of  Treaty  Revision. 
Says  the  Japanese  Government,   "Only  obey  our 


42        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

laws,  our  new  laws  that  we  have  carefully  compiled 
from  all  the  wisdom  of  the  West,  and  you  shall  go 
up  country  as  you  please  and  trade  where  you  will, 
instead  of  living  cooped  up  in  concessions  and 
being  judged  by  consuls.  Treat  us  as  you  would 
treat  France  or  Germany,  and  we  will  treat  you  as 
our  own  subjects." 

Here,  as  you  know,  the  matter  rests  between  the 
two  thousand  foreigners  and  the  forty  million 
Japanese — a  God-send  to  all  editors  of  Tokio  and 
Yokohama,  and  the  despair  of  the  newly  arrived  in 
whose  nose,  remember,  is  the  smell  of  the  East,  one 
and  indivisible,  Immemorial,  Eternal,  and,  above  all, 
instructive. 

Indeed,  it  is  only  by  walking  out  at  least  half  a 
mile  that  you  escape  from  the  aggressive  evidences 
of  civilisation,  and  come  out  into  the  rice-fields  at  the 
back  of  the  town.  Here  men  with  twists  of  blue  and 
white  cloth  round  their  heads  are  working  knee  deep 
in  the  thick  black  mud.  The  largest  field  may  be 
something  less  than  two  tablecloths,  while  the 
smallest  is,  say,  a  speck  of  underclhT,  on  to  which  it 
were  hard  to  back  a  'rickshaw,  wrested  from  the 
beach  and  growing  its  clump  of  barley  within  spray- 
shot  of  the  waves.  The  field  paths  are  the  trodden 
tops  of  the  irrigating  cuts,  and  the  main  roads  as 
wide  as  two  perambulators  abreast.  From  the 
uplands — the  beautiful  uplands  planted  in  exactly 
the  proper  places  with  pine  and  maple — the  ground 


THE  EDGE  OF  THE  EAST  43 

comes  down  in  terraced  pocket  on  pocket  of  rich 
earth  to  the  levels  again,  and  it  would  seem  that 
every  heavily-thatched  farmhouse  was  chosen  with 
special  regard  to  the  view.  If  you  look  closely  when 
the  people  go  to  work  you  will  see  that  a  household 
spreads  itself  over  plots,  maybe,  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
apart.  A  revenue  map  of  a  village  shows  that  this 
scatteration  is  apparently  designed,  but  the  reason  is 
not  given.  One  thing  at  least  is  certain.  The 
assessment  of  these  patches  can  be  no  light  piece  of 
work — just  the  thing,  in  fact,  that  would  give  em- 
ployment to  a  large  number  of  small  and  variegated 
Government  officials,  any  one  of  whom,  assuming 
that  he  was  of  an  Oriental  cast  of  mind,  might  make 
the  cultivator's  life  interesting.  I  remember  now — 
a  second-time-seen  place  brings  back  things  that  were 
altogether  buried — seeing  three  years  ago  the  pile  of 
Government  papers  required  in  the  case  of  one  farm. 
They  were  many  and  systematic,  but  the  interesting 
thing  about  them  was  the  amount  of  work  that  they 
must  have  furnished  to  those  who  were  neither 
cultivators  nor  Treasury  officials. 

If  one  knew  Japanese,  one  could  collogue  with  that 
gentleman  in  the  straw-hat  and  the  blue  loin-cloth 
who  is  chopping  within  a  sixteenth  of  an  inch  of 
his  naked  toes  with  the  father  and  mother  of  all 
weed-spuds.  His  version  of  local  taxation  might  be 
inaccurate,  but  it  would  •  surely  be  picturesque. 
Failing  his  evidence,  be  pleased  to  accept  two  or 


44        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

three  things  that  may  or  may  not  be  facts  of  general 
application.  They  differ  in  a  measure  from  state- 
ments in  the  books.  The  present  land-tax  is  nomi- 
nally 2|  per  cent,  payable  in  cash  on  a  three,  or  as 
some  say  a  five,  yearly  settlement.  But,  according 
to  certain  officials,  there  has  been  no  settlement 
since  1875.  Land  lying  fallow  for  a  season  pays  the 
same  tax  as  land  in  cultivation,  unless  it  is  unpro- 
ductive through  flood  or  calamity  (read  earthquake 
here).  The  Government  tax  is  calculated  on  the 
capital  value  of  the  land,  taking  a  measure  of  about 
11,000  square  feet  or  a  quarter  of  an  acre  as  the  unit. 

Now,  one  of  the  ways  of  getting  at  the  capital 
value  of  the  land  is  to  see  what  the  railways  have 
paid  for  it.  The  very  best  rice-land,  taking  the 
Japanese  dollar  at  three  shillings,  is  about  £65:105. 
per  acre.  Unirrigated  land  for  vegetable  growing 
is  something  over  £9:125.,  and  forest  £2:1  is.  As 
these  are  railway  rates,  they  may  be  fairly  held  to 
cover  large  areas.  In  private  sales  the  prices  may 
reasonably  be  higher. 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  some  of  the  very  best 
rice-land  will  bear  two  crops  of  rice  in  the  year. 
Most  soil  will  bear  two  crops,  the  first  being  millet, 
rape,  vegetables,  and  so  on,  sown  on  dry  soil  and 
ripening  at  the  end  of  May.  Then  the  ground  is  at 
once  prepared  for  the  wet  crop,  to  be  harvested  in 
October  or  thereabouts.  Land-tax  is  payable  in 
two  instalments.     Rice-land   pays   between  the  1st 


THE  EDGE  OF  THE  EAST  45 

November  and  the  middle  of  December  and  the  1st 
January  and  the  last  of  February.  Other  land  pays 
between  July  and  August  and  September  and 
December.  Let  us  see  what  the  average  yield  is. 
The  gentleman  in  the  sun-hat  and  the  loin-cloth 
would  shriek  at  the  figures,  but  they  are  ap- 
proximately accurate.  Rice  naturally  fluctuates  a 
good  deal,  but  it  may  be  taken  in  the  rough  at  five 
Japanese  dollars  (fifteen  shillings)  per  koku  of 
330  lbs.  Wheat  and  maize  of  the  first  spring  crop 
is  worth  about  eleven  shillings  per  koku.  The  first 
crop  gives  nearly  if  koku  per  tau  (the  quarter  acre 
unit  of  measurement  aforesaid),  or  eighteen  shillings 
per  quarter  acre,  or  £3:125.  per  acre.  The  rice  crop 
at  two  koku  or  £1 :10s.  the  quarter  acre  gives  £6  an 
acre.  Total  £9:125.  This  is  not  altogether  bad  if 
you  reflect  that  the  land  in  question  is  not  the  very 
best  rice-land,  but  ordinary  No.  1,  at  £25:165.  per 
acre,  capital  value. 

A  son  has  the  right  to  inherit  his  father's  land 
on  the  father's  assessment,  so  long  as  its  term 
runs,  or,  when  the  term  has  expired,  has  a  prior 
claim  as  against  any  one  else.  Part  of  the  taxes,  it 
is  said,  lies  by  in  the  local  prefecture's  office  as  a 
reserve  fund  against  inundations.  Yet,  and  this 
seems  a  little  confusing,  there  are  between  five  and 
seven  other  local,  provincial,  and  municipal  taxes 
which  can  reasonably  be  applied  to  the  same  ends. 
No  one  of  these  taxes  exceeds  a  half  of  the  land- 


46        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

tax,  unless  it  be  the  local  prefecture  tax  of  i\ 
per  cent. 

In  the  old  days  the  people  were  taxed,  or  perhaps 
squeezed  would  be  the  better  word,  to  about  one-half 
of  the  produce  of  the  land.  There  are  those  who  may 
say  that  the  present  system  is  not  so  advantageous  as 
it  looks.  Beforetime,  the  farmers,  it  is  true,  paid 
heavily,  but  only,  on  their  nominal  holdings.  They 
could,  and  often  did,  hold  more  land  than  they  were 
assessed  on.  To-day  a  rigid  bureaucracy  surveys 
every  foot  of  their  farms,  and  upon  every  foot  they 
have  to  pay.  Somewhat  similar  complaints  are 
made  still  by  the  simple  peasantry  of  India,  for  if 
there  is  one  thing  that  the  Oriental  detest  more  than 
another,  it  is  the  damnable  Western  vice  of  accuracy. 
That  leads  to  doing  things  by  rule.  Still,  by  the 
look  of  those  terraced  fields,  where  the  water  is  led  so 
cunningly  from  level  to  level,  the  Japanese  cultivator 
must  enjoy  at  least  one  excitement.  If  the  villages 
up  the  valley  tamper  with  the  water  supply,  there 
must  surely  be  excitement  down  the  valley — argu- 
ment, protest,  and  the  breaking  of  heads. 

The  days  of  romance,  therefore,  are  not  all 
dead. 

This  that  follows  happened  on  the  coast  twenty 
miles  through  the  fields  from  Yokohama,  at 
Kamakura,  that  is  to  say,  where  the  great  bronze 
Buddha  sits  facing  the  sea  to  hear  the  centuries  go 


THE  EDGE  OF  THE  EAST  47 

by.  He  has  been  described  again  and  again — his 
majesty,  his  aloofness,  and  every  one  of  his  dimen- 
sions, the  smoky  little  shrine  within  him,  and  the 
plumed  hill  that  makes  the  background  to  his 
throne.  For  that  reason  he  remains,  as  he  remained 
from  the  beginning,  beyond  all  hope  of  description — 
as  it  might  be,  a  visible  god  sitting  in  the  garden  of  a 
world  made  new.  They  sell  photographs  of  him 
with  tourists  standing  on  his  thumb  nail,  and, 
apparently,  any  brute  of  any  gender  can  scrawl  his  or 
her  ignoble  name  over  the  inside  of  the  massive 
bronze  plates  that  build  him  up.  Think  for  a 
moment  of  the  indignity  and  the  insult.  Imagine 
the  ancient,  orderly  gardens  with  their  clipped  trees, 
shorn  turf,  and  silent  ponds  smoking  in  the  mist 
that  the  hot  sun  soaks  up  after  rain,  and  the  green- 
bronze  image  of  the  Teacher  of  the  Law  wavering 
there  as  it  half  seems  through  incense  clouds.  The 
earth  is  all  one  censer,  and  myriads  of  frogs  are 
making  the  haze  ring.  It  is  too  warm  to  do  more 
than  to  sit  on  a  stone  and  watch  the  eyes  that,  having 
seen  all  things,  see  no  more — the  down-dropped 
eyes,  the  forward  droop  of  the  head,  and  the  colossal 
simplicity  of  the  folds  of  the  robe  over  arm  and 
knee.  Thus,  and  in  no  other  fashion,  did  Buddha 
sit  in  the  old  days  when  Ananda  asked  questions  and 
the  dreamer  began  to  dream  of  the  lives  that  lay 
behind  him  ere  the  lips  moved,  and  as  the  Chronicles 
say:     "He  told  a  tale."     This  would  be  the  way  he 


48        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

began,  for  dreamers  in  the  East  tell  something  the 
same  sort  of  tales  to-day:  "Long  ago  when 
Devadatta  was  King  of  Benares,  there  lived  a 
virtuous  elephant,  a  reprobate  ox,  and  a  King 
without  understanding."  And  the  tale  would  end, 
after  the  moral  had  been  drawn  for  Ananda's  benefit: 
"Now,  the  reprobate  ox  was  such  an  one,  and  the 
King  was  such  another,  but  the  virtuous  elephant 
was  I,  myself,  Ananda."  Thus,  then,  he  told  the 
tales  in  the  bamboo  grove,  and  the  bamboo  grove  is 
there  to-day.  Little  blue  and  gray  and  slate-robed 
figures  pass  under  its  shadow,  buy  two  or  three  joss- 
sticks,  disappear  into  the  shrine,  that  is,  the  body  of 
the  god,  come  out  smiling,  and  drift  away  through 
the  shrubberies.  A  fat  carp  in  a  pond  sucks  at  a 
fallen  leaf  with  just  the  sound  of  a  wicked  little 
worldly  kiss.  Then  the  earth  steams,  and  steams  in 
silence,  and  a  gorgeous  butterfly,  full  six  inches  from 
wing  to  wing,  cuts  through  the  steam  in  a  zigzag  of 
colour  and  flickers  up  to  the  forehead  of  the  god. 
And  Buddha  said  that  a  man  must  look  on  every- 
thing as  illusion — even  light  and  colour — the  time- 
worn  bronze  of  metal  against  blue-green  of  pine  and 
pale  emerald  of  bamboo — the  lemon  sash  of  the  girl 
in  the  cinnamon  dress,  with  coral  pins  in  her  hair, 
leaning  against  a  block  of  weather-bleached  stone — 
and,  last,  the  spray  of  blood-red  azalea  that  stands 
on  the  pale  gold  mats  of  the  tea-house  beneath  the 
honey-coloured    thatch.     To    overcome    desire    and 


THE  EDGE  OF  THE  EAST  49 

covetousness  of  mere  gold,  which  is  often  very  vilely- 
designed,  that  is  conceivable;  but  why  must  a  man 
give  up  the  delight  of  the  eye,  colour  that  rejoices, 
light  that  cheers,  and  line  that  satisfies  the  innermost 
deeps  of  the  heart?  Ah,  if  the  Bodhisat  had  only 
seen  his  own  image! 


Our  Overseas  Men 

All  things  considered,  there  are  only  two  kinds 
of  men  in  the  world — those  that  stay  at  home  and 
those  that  do  not.  The  second  are  the  most  interest- 
ing. Some  day  a  man  will  bethink  himself  and 
write  a  book  about  the  breed  in  a  book  called  "The 
Book  of  the  Overseas  Club,"  for  it  is  at  the  club- 
houses all  the  way  from  Aden  to  Yokohama  that  the 
life  of  the  Outside  Men  is  best  seen  and  their  talk  is 
best  heard.  A  strong  family  likeness  runs  through 
both  building  and  members,  and  a  large  and  careless 
hospitality  is  the  note.  There  is  always  the  same 
open-doored,  high-ceiled  house,  with  matting  on  the 
floors;  the  same  come  and  go  of  dark-skinned  ser- 
vants, and  the  same  assembly  of  men  talking  horse 
or  business,  in  raiment  that  would  fatally  scan- 
dalise a  London  committee,  among  files  of  news- 
papers from  a  fortnight  to  five  weeks  old.  The 
life  of  the  Outside  Men  includes  plenty  of  sunshine, 
and  as  much  air  as  may  be  stirring.  At  the  Cape, 
where  the  Dutch  housewives  distil  and  sell  the  very 
potent  Vanderhun,  and  the  absurd  home-made 
hansom  cabs  waddle  up  and  down  the  yellow  dust  of 
Adderley  Street  are  the  members  of  the  big  import 

5° 


OUR  OVERSEAS  MEN  51 

and  export  firms,  the  shipping  and  insurance  offices, 
inventors  of  mines,  and  exploiters  of  new  territories 
with  now  and  then  an  officer  strayed  from  India  to 
buy  mules  for  the  Government,  a  Government 
House  aide-de-camp,  a  sprinkling  of  the  officers  of 
the  garrison,  tanned  skippers  of  the  Union  and 
Castle  Lines,  and  naval  men  from  the  squadron  at 
Simon's  Town.  Here  they  talk  of  the  sins  of  Cecil 
Rhodes,  the  insolence  of  Natal,  the  beauties  or 
otherwise  of  the  solid  Boer  vote,  and  the  dates  of 
the  steamers.  The  argot  is  Dutch  and  Kaffir,  and 
every  one  can  hum  the  national  anthem  that  begins 
"Pack  your  kit  and  trek,  Johnny  Bowlegs."  In 
the  stately  Hongkong  Clubhouse,  which  is  to  the 
further  what  the  Bengal  Club  is  to  the  nearer  East, 
you  meet  much  the  same  gathering,  minus  the 
mining  speculators  and  plus  men  whose  talk  is  of  tea, 
silk,  shortings,  and  Shanghai  ponies.  The  speech  of 
the  Outside  Men  at  this  point  becomes  fearfully 
mixed  with  pidgin-English  and  local  Chinese  terms, 
rounded  with  corrupt  Portuguese.  At  Melbourne, 
in  a  long  verandah  giving  on  a  grass  plot,  where 
laughing  jackasses  laugh  very  horribly,  sit  wool 
kings,  premiers,  and  breeders  of  horses  after  their 
kind.  The  older  men  talk  of  the  days  of  the  Eureka 
Stockade  and  the  younger  of  "shearing  wars"  in 
North  Queensland,  while  the  traveller  moves  timidly 
among  them  wondering  what  under  the  world  every 
third  word  means.     At  Wellington,  overlooking  the 


52        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

harbour  (all  right-minded  clubs  should  command 
the  sea),  another  and  yet  a  like  sort  of  men  speak  of 
sheep,  the  rabbits,  the  land  courts,  and  the  ancient 
heresies  of  Sir  Julius  Vogel;  and  their  more  expressive 
sentences  borrow  from  the  Maori.  And  elsewhere, 
and  elsewhere,  and  elsewhere  among  the  Outside 
Men  it  is  the  same — the  same  mixture  of  every 
trade,  calling,  and  profession  under  the  sun;  the  same 
clash  of  conflicting  interests  touching  the  uttermost 
parts  of  the  earth;  the  same  intimate,  and  sometimes 
appalling  knowledge  of  your  neighbour's  business 
and  shortcomings;  the  same  large-palmed  hospi- 
tality, and  the  same  interest  on  the  part  of  the 
younger  men  in  the  legs  of  a  horse.  Decidedly,  it  is 
at  the  Overseas  Club  all  the  world  over  that  you  get 
to  know  some  little  of  the  life  of  the  community. 
London  is  egoistical,  and  the  world  for  her  ends  with 
the  four-mile  cab  radius.  There  is  no  provincialism 
like  the  provincialism  of  London.  That  big  slack- 
water  coated  with  the  drift  and  rubbish  of  a  thousand 
men's  thoughts  esteems  itself  the  open  sea  because 
the  waves  of  all  the  oceans  break  on  her  borders.  To 
those  in  her  midst  she  is  terribly  imposing,  but  they 
forget  that  there  is  more  than  one  kind  of  imposition. 
Look  back  upon  her  from  ten  thousand  miles,  when 
the  mail  is  just  in  at  the  Overseas  Club,  and  she  is 
wondrous  tiny.  Nine-tenths  of  her  news — so  vital,  so 
epoch-making  over  there — loses  its  significance,  and 
the  rest  is  as  the  scuffling  of  ghosts  in  a  back-attic. 


OUR  OVERSEAS  MEN  53 

Here  in  Yokohama  the  Overseas  Club  has  two 
mails  and  four  sets  of  papers — English,  French, 
German,  and  American,  as  suits  the  variety  of  its 
constitution— and  the  verandah  by  the  sea,  where 
the  big  telescope  stands,  is  a  perpetual  feast  of  the 
Pentecost.  The  population  of  the  club  changes 
with  each  steamer  in  harbour,  for  the  sea  captains 
swing  in,  are  met  with  "Hello!  where  did  you  come 
from?"  and  mix  at  the  bar  and  billiard-tables  for 
their  appointed  time  and  go  to  sea  again.  The 
white-painted  warships  supply  their  contingent  of 
members  also,  and  there  are  wonderful  men,  mines 
of  most  fascinating  adventure,  who  have  an  interest 
in  sealing-brigs  that  go  to  the  Kurile  Islands,  and 
somehow  get  into  trouble  with  the  Russian  authori- 
ties. Consuls  and  judges  of  the  Consular  Courts 
meet  men  over  on  leave  from  the  China  ports,  or  it 
may  be  Manila,  and  they  all  talk  tea,  silk,  banking, 
and  exchange  with  its  fixed  residents.  Everything 
is  always  as  bad  as  it  can  possibly  be,  and  everybody 
is  on  the  verge  of  ruin.  That  is  why,  when  they 
have  decided  that  life  is  no  longer  worth  living,  they 
go  down  to  the  skittle  alley — to  commit  suicide. 
From  the  outside,  when  a  cool  wind  blows  among  the 
papers  and  there  is  a  sound  of  smashing  ice  in  an 
inner  apartment,  and  every  third  man  is  talking 
about  the  approaching  races,  the  life  seems  to  be  a 
desirable  one.  "What  more  could  a  man  need  to 
make  him  happy?"  says  the  passer-by.     A  perfect 


54        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

climate,  a  lovely  country,  plenty  of  pleasant  society, 
and  the  politest  people  on  earth  to  deal  with.  The 
resident  smiles  and  invites  the  passer-by  to  stay 
through  July  and  August.  Further,  he  presses  him 
to  do  business  with  the  politest  people  on  earth,  and 
to  continue  so  doing  for  a  term  of  years.  Thus  the 
traveller  perceives  beyond  doubt  that  the  resident  is 
prejudiced  by  the  very  fact  of  his  residence,  and 
gives  it  as  his  matured  opinion  that  Japan  is  a 
faultless  land,  marred  only  by  the  presence  of  the 
foreign  community.  And  yet,  let  us  consider.  It 
is  the  foreign  community  that  has  made  it  possible 
for  the  traveller  to  come  and  go  from  hotel  to  hotel, 
to  get  his  passport  for  inland  travel,  to  telegraph  his 
safe  arrival  to  anxious  friends,  and  generally  enjoy 
himself  much  more  than  he  would  have  been  able 
to  do  in  his  own  country.  Government  and  gun- 
boats may  open  a  land,  but  it  is  the  men  of  the 
Overseas  Club  that  keep  it  open.  Their  reward 
(not  alone  in  Japan)  is  the  bland  patronage  or  the 
scarcely-veiled  contempt  of  those  who  profit  by 
their  labours.  It  is  hopeless  to  explain  to  a  traveller 
who  has  been  "shayoed"  into  half-a-dozen  shops 
and  "sayonaraed"  out  of  half-a-dozen  more  and 
politely  cheated  in  each  one,  that  the  Japanese  is 
an  Oriental,  and,  therefore,  embarrassingly  eco- 
nomical of  the  truth.  "That's  his  politeness,"  says 
the  traveller.  "He  does  not  wish  to  hurt  your 
feelings.     Love  him  and  treat  him  like  a  brother, 


OUR  OVERSEAS  MEN  55 

and  he'll  change."  To  treat  one  of  the  most  secre- 
tive of  races  on  a  brotherly  basis  is  not  very  easy, 
and  the  natural  politeness  that  enters  into  a  signed 
and  sealed  contract  and  undulates  out  of  it  so  soon 
as  it  does  not  sufficiently  pay  is  more  than  embarrass- 
ing. It  is  almost  annoying.  The  want  of  fixity  or 
commercial  honour  may  be  due  to  some  natural 
infirmity  of  the  artistic  temperament,  or  to  the 
manner  in  which  the  climate  has  affected,  and  his 
ruler  has  ruled,  the  man  himself  for  untold  centuries. 
Those  who  know  the  East  know,  where  the  system 
of  "squeeze,"  which  is  commission,  runs  through 
every  transaction  of  life,  from  the  sale  of  a  groom's 
place  upward,  where  the  woman  walks  behind  the 
man  in  the  streets,  and  where  the  peasant  gives  you 
for  the  distance  to  the  next  town  as  many  or  as  few 
miles  as  he  thinks  you  will  like,  that  these  things 
must  be  so.  Those  who  do  not  know  will  not  be 
persuaded  till  they  have  lived  there.  The  Overseas 
Club  puts  up  its  collective  nose  scornfully  when  it 
hears  of  the  New  and  Regenerate  Japan  sprung  to 
life  since  the  'seventies.  It  grins,  with  shame  be  it 
written,  at  an  Imperial  Diet  modelled  on  the  German 
plan  and  a  Code  Napoleon  a  la  Japonaise.  It  is  so 
far  behind  the  New  Era  as  to  doubt  that  an  Oriental 
country,  ridden  by  etiquette  of  the  sternest,  and 
social  distinctions  almost  as  hard  as  those  of  caste, 
can  be  turned  out  to  Western  gauge  in  the  compass 
of  a  very  young  man's  life.     And  it  must  be   pre- 


56        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

judiced,  because  it  is  daily  and  hourly  in  contact 
with  the  Japanese,  except  when  it  can  do  business 
with  the  Chinaman  whom  it  prefers.  Was  there  ever 
so  disgraceful  a  club ! 

Just  at  present,  a  crisis,  full  blown  as  a  chrysan- 
themum, has  developed  in  the  Imperial  Diet. 
Both  Houses  accuse  the  Government  of  improper 
interference — this  Japanese  for  "plenty  stick  and 
some  bank-note" — at  the  recent  elections.  They 
then  did  what  was  equivalent  to  passing  a  vote  of 
censure  on  the  Ministry  and  refusing  to  vote  govern- 
ment measures.  So  far  the  wildest  advocate  of 
representative  government  could  have  desired  noth- 
ing better.  Afterwards,  things  took  a  distinctly 
Oriental  turn.  The  Ministry  refused  to  resign,  and 
the  Mikado  prorogued  the  Diet  for  a  week  to  think 
things  over.  The  Japanese  papers  are  now  at  issue 
over  the  event.  Some  say  that  representative 
government  implies  party  government,  and  others 
swear  at  large.  The  Overseas  Club  says  for  the 
most  part — "Skittles!" 

It  is  a  picturesque  situation — one  that  suggests 
romances  and  extravaganzas.  Thus,  imagine  a 
dreaming  Court  intrenched  behind  a  triple  line 
of  moats  where  the  lotus  blooms  in  summer — a 
Court  whose  outer  fringe  is  aggressively  European, 
but  whose  heart  is  Japan  of  long  ago,  where  a  dream- 
ing King  sits  among  some  wives  or  other  things, 
amused  from  time  to  time  with  magic-lantern  shows 


OUR  OVERSEAS  MEN  57 

and  performing  fleas — a  holy  King  whose  sanctity  is 
used  to  conjure  with,  and  who  twice  a  year  gives 
garden-parties  where  every  one  must  come  in  top- 
hat  and  frock  coat.  Round  this  Court,  wavering 
between  the  splendours  of  the  sleeping  and  the 
variety  shows  of  the  Crystal  Palace,  place  in  furious 
but  carefully  veiled  antagonism  the  fragments  of 
newly  shattered  castes,  their  natural  Oriental  ec- 
centricities overlaid  with  borrowed  Western  notions. 
Imagine  now,  a  large  and  hungry  bureaucracy, 
French  in  its  fretful  insistence  on  detail  where  detail 
is  of  no  earthly  moment,  Oriental  in  its  stress  on 
etiquette  and  punctilio,  recruited  from  a  military 
caste  accustomed  for  ages  past  to  despise  alike 
farmer  and  trader.  This  caste,  we  will  suppose,  is 
more  or  less  imperfectly  controlled  by  a  syndicate  of 
three  clans,  which  supply  their  own  nominees  to  the 
Ministry.  These  are  adroit,  versatile,  and  un- 
scrupulous men,  hampered  by  no  western  prejudice 
in  favour  of  carrying  any  plan  to  completion. 
Through  and  at  the  bidding  of  these  men,  the  holy 
Monarch  acts;  and  the  acts  are  wonderful.  To 
criticise  these  acts  exists  a  wild-cat  Press,  liable  to 
suppression  at  any  moment,  as  morbidly  sensitive 
to  outside  criticism  as  the  American,  and  almost  as 
childishly  untruthful,  fungoid  in  the  swiftness  of  its 
growth,  and  pitiable  in  its  unseasoned  rashness. 
Backers  of  this  press  in  its  wilder  moments,  lawless, 
ignorant,  sensitive  and  vain,  are  the  student  class, 


58        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

educated  in  the  main  at  Government  expense,  and 
a  thorn  in  the  side  of  the  State.  Judges  without 
training  handle  laws  without  precedents,  and  new 
measures  are  passed  and  abandoned  with  almost 
inconceivable  levity.  Out  of  the  welter  of  classes 
and  interests  that  are  not  those  of  the  common  folk 
is  evolved  the  thing  called  Japanese  policy;  that  has 
the  proportion  and  the  perspective  of  a  Japanese 
picture. 

Finality  and  stability  are  absent  from  its  councils. 
To-day,  for  reasons  none  can  explain,  it  is  pro- 
foreign  to  the  verge  of  servility.  To-morrow,  for 
reasons  equally  obscure,  the  pendulum  swings  back, 
and — the  students  are  heaving  mud  at  the  foreigners 
in  the  streets.  Vexatious,  irresponsible,  incoherent, 
and,  above  all,  cheaply  mysterious,  is  the  rule  of  the 
land — stultified  by  intrigue  and  counter-intrigue, 
chequered  with  futile  reforms  begun  on  European 
lines  and  light-heartedly  thrown  aside;  studded, 
as  a  bower-bird's  run  is  studded  with  shells  and 
shining  pebbles,  with  plagiarisms  from  half  the 
world — an  operetta  of  administration,  wherein  the 
shadow  of  the  King  among  his  wives,  Samurai 
policemen,  doctors  who  have  studied  under  Pasteur, 
kid-gloved  cavalry  officers  from  St.  Cyr,  judges  with 
University  degrees,  harlots  with  fiddles,  newspaper 
correspondents,  masters  of  the  ancient  ceremonies 
of  the  land,  paid  members  of  the  Diet,  secret  societies 
that  borrow  the  knife  and  the  dynamite  of  the  Irish, 


OUR  OVERSEAS  MEN  59 

sons  of  dispossessed  Daimios  returned  from  Europe 
and  waiting  for  what  may  turn  up,  with  ministers 
of  the  syndicate  who  have  wrenched  Japan  from 
her  repose  of  twenty  years  ago,  circle,  flicker,  shift, 
and  reform,  in  bewildering  rings,  round  the  foreign 
resident.     Is  the  extravaganza  complete  ? 

Somewhere  in  the  background  of  the  stage  are  the 
people  of  the  land — of  whom  a  very  limited  propor- 
tion enjoy  the  privileges  of  representative  govern- 
ment. Whether  in  the  past  few  years  they  have 
learned  what  the  thing  means,  or,  learning,  have 
the  least  intention  of  making  any  use  of  it,  is  not 
clear.  Meantime,  the  game  of  government  goes 
forward  as  merrily  as  a  game  of  puss-in-the-corner, 
with  the  additional  joy  that  not  more  than  half-a- 
dozen  men  know  who  is  controlling  it  or  what  in  the 
wide  world  it  intends  to  do.  In  Tokio  live  the 
steadily-diminishing  staff  of  Europeans  employed  by 
the  Emperor  as  engineers,  railway  experts,  professors 
in  the  colleges  and  so  forth.  Before  many  years  they 
will  all  be  dispensed  with,  and  the  country  will  set 
forth  among  the  nations  alone  and  on  its  own 
responsibility. 

In  fifty  years  then,  from  the  time  that  the  in- 
trusive American  first  broke  her  peace,  Japan  will 
experience  her  new  birth  and,  reorganized  from 
sandal  to  top-knot,  play  the  samisen  in  the  march  of 
modern  progress.  This  is  the  great  advantage  of 
being  born  into  the  New  Era,  when  individual  and 


60        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

community  alike  can  get  something  for  nothing — 
pay  without  work,  education  without  effort,  religion 
without  thought,  and  free  government  without  slow 
and  bitter  toil. 

The  Overseas  Club,  as  has  been  said,  is  behind  the 
spirit  of  the  age.  It  has  to  work  for  what  it  gets, 
and  it  does  not  always  get  what  it  works  for.  Nor 
can  its  members  take  ship  and  go  home  when  they 
please.  Imagine  for  a  little,  the  contented  frame  of 
mind  that  is  bred  in  a  man  by  the  perpetual  con- 
templation of  a  harbour  full  of  steamers  as  a  Picca- 
dilly cab-rank  of  hansoms.  The  weather  is  hot,  we 
v  suppose;  something  has  gone  wrong  with  his 
work  that  day,  or  his  children  are  not  looking  so 
well  as  might  be.  Pretty  tiled  bungalows,  bowered 
in  roses  and  wistaria,  do  not  console  him,  and  the 
voices  of  the  politest  people  on  earth  jar  sorely.  He 
knows  every  soul  in  the  club,  has  thoroughly  talked 
out  every  subject  of  interest,  and  would  give  half  a 
year's — oh,  five  years'  pay — for  one  lung-filling 
breath  of  air  that  has  life  in  it,  one  sniff  of  the  haying 
grass,  or  half  a  mile  of  muddy  London  street  where 
the  muffin  bell  tinkles  in  the  four  o'clock  fog.  Then 
the  big  liner  moves  out  across  the  staring  blue  of  the 
bay.  So-and-so  and  such-an-one,  both  friends,  are 
going  home  in  her,  and  some  one  else  goes  next  week 
by  the  French  mail.  He,  and  he  alone,  it  seems  to 
him,  must  stay  on;  and  it  is  so  maddeningly  easy  to 
go — for  every  one  save  himself.     The  boat's  smoke 


OUR  OVERSEAS  MEN  61 

dies  out  along  the  horizon,  and  he  is  left  alone  with 
the  warm  wind  and  the  white  dust  of  the  Bund. 
Now  Japan  is  a  good  place,  a  place  that  men  swear 
by  and  live  in  for  thirty  years  at  a  stretch.  There 
are  China  ports  a  week's  sail  to  the  westward  where 
life  is  really  hard,  and  where  the  sight  of  the  restless 
shipping  hurts  very  much  indeed.  Tourists  and 
you  who  travel  the  world  over,  be  very  gentle  to  the 
men  of  the  Overseas  Clubs.  Remember  that,  un- 
like yourselves,  they  have  not  come  here  for  the  good 
of  their  health,  and  that  the  return  ticket  in  your 
wallet  may  possibly  colour  your  views  of  their  land. 
Perhaps  it  would  not  be  altogether  wise  on  the 
strength  of  much  kindness  from  Japanese  officials 
to  recommend  that  these  your  countrymen  be 
handed  over  lock,  stock,  and  barrel  to  a  people  that 
are  beginning  to  experiment  with  fresh-drafted, 
half-grafted  codes  which  do  not  include  juries,  to  a 
system  that  does  not  contemplate  a  free  Press,  to  a 
suspicious  absolutism  from  which  there  is  no  appeal. 
Truly,  it  might  be  interesting,  but  as  surely  it  would 
begin  in  farce  and  end  in  tragedy,  that  would  leave 
the  politest  people  on  earth  in  no  case  to  play  at 
civilised  government  for  a  long  time  to  come.  In 
his  concession,  where  he  is  an  apologetic  and  much 
sat-upon  importation,  the  foreign  resident  does  no 
harm.  He  does  not  always  sue  for  money  due  to 
him  on  the  part  of  a  Japanese.  Once  outside  those 
limits,  free  to  move  into  the  heart  of  the  country 


62        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

it  would  only  be  a  question  of  time  as  to  where  and 
when  the  trouble  would  begin.  And  in  the  long  run 
it  would  not  be  the  foreign  resident  that  would 
suffer.  The  imaginative  eye  can  see  the  most  un- 
pleasant possibilities,  from  a  general  overrunning  of 
Japan  by  the  Chinaman,  who  is  far  the  most  im- 
portant foreign  resident,  to  the  shelling  of  Tokio  by  a 
joyous  and  bounding  democracy,  anxious  to  vin- 
dicate her  national  honour  and  to  learn  how  her 
newly  made  navy  works. 

But  there  are  scores  of  arguments  that  would 
confute  and  overwhelm  this  somewhat  gloomy 
view.  The  statistics  of  Japan,  for  instance,  are  as 
beautiful  and  fit  as  neatly  as  the  woodwork  of  her 
houses.  By  these  it  would  be  possible  to  prove 
anything. 


Some  Earthquakes 

A  Radical  Member  of  Parliament  at  Tokio  has  just 
got  into  trouble  with  his  constituents,  and  they  have 
sent  him  a  priceless  letter  of  reproof.  Among 
other  things  they  point  out  that  a  politician  should 
not  be  "a  waterweed  which  wobbles  hither  and 
thither  according  to  the  motion  of  the  stream." 
Nor  should  he  "like  a  ghost  without  legs  drift  along 
before  the  wind/'  "Your  conduct,"  they  say,  "has 
been  both  of  a  waterweed  and  a  ghost,  and  we 
purpose  in  a  little  time  to  give  you  proof  of  our  true 
Japanese  spirit."  That  member  will  very  likely 
be  mobbed  in  his  'rickshaw  and  prodded  to  incon- 
venience with  sword-sticks;  for  the  constituencies 
are  most  enlightened.  But  how  in  the  world  can  a 
man  under  these  skies  behave  except  as  a  waterweed 
and  a  ghost?  It  is  in  the  air — the  wobble  and  the 
legless  drift.  An  energetic  tourist  would  have  gone 
to  Hakodate,  seen  Ainos  at  Sapporo,  ridden  across 
the  northern  island  under  the  gigantic  thistles, 
caught  salmon,  looked  in  at  Vladivostock,  and  done 
half  a  hundred  things  in  the  time  that  one  lazy 
loafer  has  wasted  watching  the  barley  turn  from 
green  to  gold,  the   azaleas  blossom  and  burn  out, 

63 


64        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

and  the  spring  give  way  to  the  warm  rains  of 
summer.  Now  the  iris  has  taken  up  the  blazonry 
of  the  year,  and  the  tide  of  the  tourists  ebbs  west- 
ward. 

The  permanent  residents  are  beginning  to  talk  of 
hill  places  to  go  to  for  the  hot  weather,  and  all  the 
available  houses  in  the  resort  are  let.  In  a  little 
while  the  men  from  China  will  be  coming  over  for 
their  holidays,  but  just  at  present  we  are  in  the 
thick  of  the  tea  season,  and  there  is  no  time  to 
waste  on  frivolities.  "Packing"  is  a  valid  excuse  for 
anything,  from  forgetting  a  dinner  to  declining  a 
tennis  party,  and  the  tempers  of  husbands  are 
judged  leniently.  All  along  the  sea  face  is  an  in- 
spiring smell  of  the  finest  new-mown  hay,  and  canals 
are  full  of  boats  loaded  up  with  the  boxes  jostling 
down  to  the  harbour.  At  the  club  men  say  rude 
things  about  the  arrivals  of  the  mail.  There  never 
was  a  post-office  yet  that  did  not  rejoice  in  knocking 
a  man's  Sabbath  into  flinders.  A  fair  office  day's 
work  may  begin  at  eight  and  end  at  six,  or,  if  the 
mail  comes  in,  at  midnight.  There  is  no  overtime  or 
eight-hours'  baby-talk  in  tea.  Yonder  are  the  ships; 
here  is  the  stuff,  and  behind  all  is  the  American 
market.     The  rest  is  your  own  affair. 

The  narrow  streets  are  blocked  with  the  wains 
bringing  down,  in  boxes  of  every  shape  and  size,  the 
up-country  rough  leaf.  Some  one  must  take  de- 
livery of  these  things,   find   room  for  them  in  the 


SOME  EARTHQUAKES  65 

packed  warehouse,  and  sample  them  before  they  are 
blended  and  go  to  the  firing. 

More  than  half  the  elaborate  processes  are  "lost 
work"  so  far  as  the  quality  of  the  stufF  goes;  but  the 
markets  insist  on  a  good-looking  leaf,  with  polish, 
face  and  curl  to  it,  and  in  this,  as  in  other  businesses, 
the  call  of  the  markets  is  the  law.  The  factory 
floors  are  made  slippery  with  the  tread  of  bare- 
footed coolies,  who  shout  as  the  tea  whirls  through  its 
transformations.  The  over-note  to  the  clamour — an 
uncanny  thing  too — is  the  soft  rustle-down  of  the 
tea  itself — stacked  in  heaps,  carried  in  baskets, 
dumped  through  chutes,  rising  and  falling  in  the 
long  troughs  where  it  is  polished,  and  disappearing 
at  last  into  the  heart  of  the  firing-machine — always 
this  insistent  whisper  of  moving  dead  leaves.  Steam- 
sieves  sift  it  into  grades,  with  jarrings  and  thumpings 
that  make  the  floor  quiver,  and  the  thunder  of 
steam-gear  is  always  at  its  heels;  but  it  continues  to 
mutter  unabashed  till  it  is  riddled  down  into  the 
big,  foil-lined  boxes  and  lies  at  peace. 

A  few  days  ago  the  industry  suffered  a  check 
which,  lasting  not  more  than  two  minutes,  lost 
several  hundred  pounds  of  hand-fired  tea.  It  was 
something  after  this  way.  Into  the  stillness  of  a 
hot,  stuffy  morning  came  an  unpleasant  noise  as  of 
batteries  of  artillery  charging  up  all  the  roads  to- 
gether, and  at  least  one  bewildered  sleeper  waking 
saw  his  empty  boots  where  they  "sat  and   played 


66        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

toccatas  stately  at  the  clavicord."  It  was  the 
washstand  really  but  the  effect  was  awful.  Then  a 
clock  fell  and  a  wall  cracked,  and  heavy  hands 
caught  the  house  by  the  roof-pole  and  shook  it 
furiously.  To  preserve  an  equal  mind  when  things 
are  hard  is  good,  but  he  who  has  not  fumbled  des- 
perately at  bolted  jalousies  that  will  not  open  while 
a  whole  room  is  being  tossed  in  a  blanket  does  not 
know  how  hard  it  is  to  find  any  sort  of  mind  at  all. 
The  end  of  the  terror  was  inadequate — a  rush  into 
the  still,  heavy  outside  air,  only  to  find  the  servants 
in  the  garden  giggling  (the  Japanese  would  giggle 
through  the  Day  of  Judgment)  and  to  learn  that  the 
earthquake  was  over.  Then  came  the  news,  swift 
borne  from  the  business  quarters  below  the  hill,  that 
the  coolies  of  certain  factories  had  fled  shrieking  at 
the  first  shock,  and  that  all  the  tea  in  the  pans  was 
burned  to  a  crisp.  That,  certainly,  was  some  con- 
solation for  undignified  panic;  and  there  remained 
the  hope  that  a  few  tall  chimneys  up  the  line  at 
Tokio  would  have  collapsed.  They  stood  firm, 
however,  and  the  local  papers,  used  to  this  kind  of 
thing,  merely  spoke  of  the  shock  as  "severe." 
Earthquakes  are  demoralising;  but  they  bring  out 
all  the  weaknesses  of  human  nature.  First  is  down- 
right dread;  the  stage  of — "only  let  me  get  into  the 
open  and  I'll  reform,"  then  the  impulse  to  send 
news  of  the  most  terrible  shock  of  modern  times 
flying  east  and  west  among  the  cables.     (Did  not 


SOME  EARTHQUAKES  67 

your  own  hair  stand  straight  on  end,  and,  therefore, 
must  not  everybody  else's  have  done  likewise?) 
Last,  as  fallen  humanity  picks  itself  together,  comes 
the  cry  of  the  mean  little  soul:  "What!  Was  that 
all?     I  wasn't  frightened  from  the  beginning." 

It  is  wholesome  and  tonic  to  realise  the  power- 
lessness  of  man  in  the  face  of  these  little  accidents. 
The  heir  of  all  the  ages,  the  annihilator  of  time  and 
space,  who  politely  doubts  the  existence  of  his  Maker, 
hears  the  roof-beams  crack  and  strain  above  him, 
and  scuttles  about  like  a  rabbit  in  a  stoppered  war- 
ren. If  the  shock  endure  for  twenty  minutes,  the 
annihilator  of  time  and  space  must  camp  out  under 
the  blue  and  hunt  for  his  dead  among  the  rubbish. 
Given  a  violent  convulsion  (only  just  such  a  slipping 
of  strata  as  carelessly  piled  volumes  will  accomplish 
in  a  book-case)  and  behold,  the  heir  of  all  the  ages  is 
stark,  raving  mad — a  brute  among  the  dishevelled 
hills.  Set  a  hundred  of  the  world's  greatest  spirits, 
men  of  fixed  principles,  high  aims,  resolute  endeavour, 
enormous  experience,  and  the  modesty  that  these 
attributes  bring — set  them  to  live  through  such  a 
catastrophe  as  that  which  wiped  out  Nagoya  last 
October,  and  at  the  end  of  three  days  there  would 
remain  few  whose  souls  might  be  called  their  own. 

So  much  for  yesterday's  shock.  To-day  there 
has  come  another;  and  a  most  comprehensive  affair 
it  is.  It  has  broken  nothing,  unless  maybe  an  old 
heart  or  two  cracks  later  on;  and  the  wise  people  in 


68        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

the  settlement  are  saying  that  they  predicted  it  from 
the  first.  None  the  less  as  an  earthquake  it  deserves 
recording. 

It  was  a  very  rainy  afternoon;  all  the  streets  were 
full  of  gruelly  mud,  and  all  the  business  men  were  at 
work  in  their  offices  when  it  began.  A  knot  of 
Chinamen  were  studying  a  closed  door  from 
whose  further  side  came  a  most  unpleasant  sound  of 
bolting  and  locking  up.  The  notice  on  the  door  was 
interesting.  With  deep  regret  did  the  manager  of 
the  New  Oriental  Banking  Corporation,  Limited 
(most  decidedly  limited)  announce  that  by  tele- 
graphic orders  from  home  he  had  suspended  pay- 
ment. Said  one  Chinaman  to  another  in  pidgin- 
Japanese:  "It  is  shut,"  and  went  away.  The 
noise  of  barring  up  continued,  the  rain  fell,  and  the 
notice  stared  down  the  wet  street.  That  was  all. 
There  must  have  been  two  or  three  men  passing 
by  to  whom  the  announcement  meant  the  loss  of 
every  penny  of  their  savings — comforting  knowledge 
to  digest  after  tiffin.  In  London,  of  course,  the 
failure  would  not  mean  so  much;  there  are  many 
banks  in  the  City,  and  people  would  have  had 
warning.  Here  banks  are  few,  people  are  dependent 
on  them,  and  this  news  came  out  of  the  sea  un- 
heralded, an  evilborn  with  all  its  teeth. 

After  the  crash  of  a  bursting  shell  every  one  who 
can  picks  himself  up,  brushes  the  dirt  off  his  uniform, 
and  tries  to   make   a  joke  of  it.     Then   some  one 


SOME  EARTHQUAKES  69 

whips  a  handkerchief  round  his  hand — a  splinter  has 
torn  it — and  another  finds  warm  streaks  running 
down  his  forehead.  Then  a  man,  overlooked  till 
now  and  past  help,  groans  to  the  death.  Everybody 
perceives  with  a  start  that  this  is  no  time  for  laughter, 
and  the  dead  and  wounded  are  attended  to. 

Even  so  at  the  Overseas  Club  when  the  men  got 
out  of  office.  The  brokers  had  told  them  the  news. 
In  filed  the  English,  and  Americans,  and  Germans, 
and  French,  and  "Here's  a  pretty  mess!"  they  said 
one  and  all.  Many  of  them  were  hit,  but,  like  good 
men,  they  did  not  say  how  severely. 

"Ah!"  said  a  little  P.  and  O.  official,  wagging  his 
head  sagaciously  (he  had  lost  a  thousand  dollars 
since  noon),  "It's  all  right  nczv.  They're  trying  to 
make  the  best  of  it.  In  three  or  four  days  we  shall 
hear  more  about  it.     I  meant  to  draw  my  money 

just  before  I  went  down  coast,  but "     Curiously 

enough,  it  was  the  same  story  throughout  the  Club. 
Everybody  had  intended  to  withdraw,  and  nearly 
everybody  had — not  done  so.  The  manager  of  a 
bank  which  had  not  failed  was  explaining  how,  in  his 
opinion,  the  crash  had  come  about.  This  was  also 
very  human.  It  helped  none.  Entered  a  lean 
American,  throwing  back  his  waterproof  all  dripping 
with  the  rain;  his  face  was  calm  and  peaceful.  "Boy, 
whisky  and  soda,"  he  said. 

"How  much  haf  you  losd?"  said  a  Teuton  bluntly. 
"Eight-fifty,"  replied  the  son  of  George  Washington 


70        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

sweetly.  "Don't  see  how  that  prevents  me  having 
a  drink.  My  glass,  sirr."  He  continued  an  in- 
terrupted whistling  of  "  I  owe  ten  dollars  to  O'Grady" 
(which  he  very  probably  did),  and  his  countenance 
departed  not  from  its  serenity.  If  there  is  anything 
that  one  loves  an  American  for  it  is  the  way  he 
stands  certain  kinds  of  punishment.  An  English- 
man and  a  heavy  loser  was  being  chaffed  by  a 
Scotchman  whose  account  at  the  Japan  end  of  the 
line  had  been  a  trifle  overdrawn.  True,  he  would 
lose  in  England,  but  the  thought  of  the  few  dollars 
saved  here  cheered  him. 

More  men  entered,  sat  down  by  tables,  stood 
in  groups,  or  remained  apart  by  themselves,  thinking 
with  knit  brows.  One  must  think  quickly  when 
one's  bills  are  falling  due.  The  murmur  of  voices 
thickened,  and  there  was  no  rumbling  in  the  skittle- 
alley  to  interrupt  it.  Everybody  knows  everybody 
else  at  the  Overseas  Club,  and  everybody  sym- 
pathises. A  man  passed  stiffly  and  some  one  of  a 
group  turned  to  ask  lightly,  "Hit,  old  man?" 
"Like  hell,"  he  said,  and  went  on  biting  his  unlit 
cigar.  Another  man  was  telling,  slowly  and  some- 
what bitterly,  how  he  had  expected  one  of  his  chil- 
dren to  join  him  out  here,  and  how  the  passage  had 
been  paid  with  a  draft  on  the  O.  B.  C.  But 
now  .  .  .  There,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  is  where 
it  hurts,  this  little  suspension  out  here.  It  destroys 
plans,  pretty  ones  hoped  for  and  prayed  over,  maybe 


SOME  EARTHQUAKES  yi 

for  years;  it  knocks  pleasant  domestic  arrange- 
ments galleywest  over  and  above  all  the  mere  ruin 
that  it  causes.  The  curious  thing  in  the  talk  was 
that  there  was  no  abuse  of  the  bank.  The  men  were 
in  the  Eastern  trade  themselves  and  they  knew.  It 
was  the  Yokohama  manager  and  the  clerks  thrown 
out  of  employment  (connection  with  a  broken 
bank,  by  the  way,  goes  far  to  ruin  a  young  man's 
prospects)  for  whom  they  were  sorry.  "We're 
doing  ourselves  well  this  year,"  said  a  wit  grimly. 
"One  free-shooting  case,  one  thundering  libel  case, 
and  a  bank  smash.  Showing  off  pretty  before  the 
globe-trotters,  aren't  we?" 

"Gad,  think  of  the  chaps  at  sea  with  letters  of 
credit.  Eh?  They'll  land  and  get  the  best  rooms  at 
the  hotels  and  find  they're  penniless,"  said  another. 

"Never  mind  the  globe-trotters,"  said  a  third. 
"Look  nearer  home.  This  does  for  so-and-so,  and 
so-and-so,  and  so-and-so,  all  old  men;  and  every 
penny  of  theirs  goes.     Poor  devils!" 

"That  reminds  me  of  some  one  else,"  said  yet 
another  voice.  "His  wife's  at  home,  too.  Whew!" 
and  he  whistled  drearily.  So  did  the  tide  of  voices 
run  on  till  men  got  to  talking  over  the  chances  of  a 
dividend.  "They  went  to  the  Bank  of  England," 
drawled  an  American,  "and  the  Bank  of  England 
let  them  down.  'Said  their  securities  weren't  good 
enough." 

"Great  Scott!" — a  hand  came  down  on  a  table  to 


72        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

emphasise  the  remark — "I  sailed  half  way  up  the 
Mediterranean  once  with  a  Bank  of  England  director; 
wish  I'd  tipped  him  over  the  rail  and  lowered  him  a 
boat  on  his  own  security — if  it  was  good  enough." 

"Baring's  goes.  The  O.  B.  C.  don't,"  replied  the 
American,  blowing  smoke  through  his  nose.  "This 
business  looks  de-ci-ded-ly  prob-le-mat-i-cal.  What- 
at?" 

"Oh,  they'll  pay  the  depositors  in  full.  Don't 
you  fret,"  said  a  man  who  had  lost  nothing  and  was 
anxious  to  console. 

"I'm  a  shareholder,"  said  the  American,  and 
smoked  on. 

The  rain  continued  to  fall,  and  the  umbrellas 
dripped  in  the  racks,  and  the  wet  men  came  and 
went,  circling  round  the  central  fact  that  it  was  a 
bad  business,  till  the  day,  as  was  most  fit,  shut  down 
in  drizzling  darkness.  There  was  a  refreshing  sense 
of  brotherhood  in  misfortunes  in  the  little  community 
that  had  just  been  electrocuted  and  did  not  want  any 
more  shocks.  All  the  pain  that  in  England  would  be 
taken  home  to  be  borne  in  silence  and  alone  was  here 
bulked,  as  it  were,  and  faced  in  line  of  companies. 
Surely  the  Christians  of  old  must  have  fought  much 
better  when  they  met  the  lions  by  fifties  at  a  time. 

At  last  the  men  departed;  the  bachelors  to  cast 
up  accounts  by  themselves  (there  should  be  some 
good  ponies  for  sale  shortly)  and  the  married  men  to 
take   counsel.     May   heaven    help   him  whose   wife 


SOME  EARTHQUAKES  73 

does  not  stand  by  him  now!  But  the  women  of  the 
Overseas  settlements  are  as  thorough  as  the  men. 
There  will  be  tears  for  plans  forgone,  the  changing  of 
the  little  ones'  schools  and  elder  children's  careers, 
unpleasant  letters  to  be  written  home,  and  more 
unpleasant  ones  to  be  received  from  relatives  who 
"told  you  so  from  the  first."  There  will  be  pinchings 
too,  and  straits  of  which  the  outside  world  will  know 
nothing,  but  the  women  will  pull  it  through  smiling. 
Beautiful  indeed  are  the  operations  of  modern 
finance — especially  when  anything  goes  wrong  with 
the  machine.  To-night  there  will  be  trouble  in 
India  among  the  Ceylon  planters,  the  Calcutta  jute 
and  the  Bombay  cotton-brokers,  besides  the  little 
households  of  small  banked  savings.  In  Hongkong, 
Singapore,  and  Shanghai  there  will  be  trouble  too, 
and  goodness  only  knows  what  wreck  at  Chelten- 
ham, Bath,  St.  Leonard's,  Torquay,  and  the  other 
camps  of  the  retired  Army  officers.  They  are 
lucky  in  England  who  know  what  happens  when  it 
happens,  but  here  the  people  are  at  the  wrong  end 
of  the  cables,  and  the  situation  is  not  good.  Only 
one  thing  seems  certain.  There  is  a  notice  on  a 
shut  door,  in  the  wet,  and  by  virtue  of  that  notice  all 
the  money  that  was  theirs  yesterday  is  gone  away, 
and  it  may  never  come  back  again.  So  all  the  work 
that  won  the  money  must  be  done  over  again;  but 
some  of  the  people  are  old,  and  more  are  tired,  and 
all  are  disheartened.     It  is  a  very  sorrowful  little 


74        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

i 

community  that  goes  to  bed  to-night,  and  there 
must  be  as  sad  ones  the  world  over.  Let  it  be 
written,  however,  that  of  the  sections  under  fire  here 
(and  some  are  cruelly  hit)  no  man  whined,  or  whimp- 
ered, or  broke  down.  There  was  no  chance  of 
fighting.  It  was  bitter  defeat,  but  they  took  it 
standing. 


Half-a-Dozen  Pictures 

"Some  men  when  they  grow  rich,  store  pictures  in  a 
gallery."  Living  their  friends  envy  them,  and  after 
death  the  genuineness  of  the  collection  is  disputed 
under  a  dispersing  hammer. 

A  better  way  is  to  spread  your  pictures  over  all 
earth;  visiting  them  as  Fate  allows.  Then  none  can 
steal  or  deface,  nor  any  reverse  of  fortune  force  a 
sale;  sunshine  and  tempest  warm  and  ventilate  the 
gallery  for  nothing,  and — in  spite  of  all  that  has 
been  said  of  her  crudeness — Nature  is  not  altogether 
a  bad  frame-maker.  The  knowledge  that  you  may 
never  live  to  see  an  especial  treasure  twice  teaches  the 
eyes  to  see  quickly  while  the  light  lasts;  and  the 
possession  of  such  a  gallery  breeds  a  very  fine  con- 
tempt for  painted  shows  and  the  smeared  things  that 
are  called  pictures. 

In  the  North  Pacific,  to  the  right  hand  as  you  go 
westward,  hangs  a  small  study  of  no  particular 
value  as  compared  with  some  others.  The  mist  is 
down  on  an  oily  stretch  of  washed-out  sea;  through 
the  mist  the  bats-wings  of  a  sealing  schooner  are  just 
indicated.  In  the  foreground,  all  but  leaping  out 
of  the  frame,  an  open  row-boat,  painted  the  crudest 

75 


76        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

blue  and  white,  rides  up  over  the  shoulder  of  a 
swell.  A  man  in  blood-red  jersey  and  long  boots,  all 
shining  with  moisture,  stands  at  the  bows  holding 
up  the  carcase  of  a  silver-bellied  sea-otter  from  whose 
pelt  the  wet  drips  in  moonstones.  Now  the  artist 
who  could  paint  the  silver  wash  of  the  mist,  the 
wriggling  treacly  reflection  of  the  boat,  and  the  raw 
red  wrists  of  the  man  would  be  something  of  a  work- 
man. 

But  my  gallery  is  in  no  danger  of  being  copied  at 
present.  Three  years  since,  I  met  an  artist  in  the 
stony  bed  of  a  brook,  between  a  line  of  300  graven, 
lichened  godlings  and  a  flaming  bank  of  azaleas, 
swearing  horribly.  He  had  been  trying  to  paint  one 
of  my  pictures — nothing  more  than  a  big  water-worn 
rock  tufted  with  flowers  and  a  snow-capped  hill  for 
background.  Most  naturally  he  failed,  because 
there  happened  to  be  absolutely  no  perspective  in 
the  thing,  and  he  was  pulling  the  lines  about  to 
make  some  for  home  consumption.  No  man  can 
put  the  contents  of  a  gallon  jar  into  a  pint  mug. 
The  protests  of  all  uncomfortably-crowded  mugs 
since  the  world  began  have  settled  that  long  ago,  and 
have  given  us  the  working  theories,  devised  by  im- 
perfect instruments  for  imperfect  instrument,  which 
are  called  Rules  of  Art. 

Luckily,  those  who  painted  my  gallery  were  born 
before  man.  Therefore,  my  pictures,  instead  of 
being   boxed    up   by   lumbering   bars   of  gold,    are 


HALF-A-DOZEN  PICTURES  77 

disposed  generously  between  latitudes,  equinoxes, 
monsoons,  and  the  like,  and,  making  all  allowance  for 
an  owner's  partiality,  they  are  really  not  so  bad. 

"Down  in  the  South  where  the  ships  never  go" — 
between  the  heel  of  New  Zealand  and  the  South 
Pole,  there  is  a  sea-piece  showing  a  steamer  trying  to 
come  round  in  the  trough  of  a  big  beam  sea.  The 
wet  light  of  the  day's  end  comes  more  from  the 
water  than  the  sky,  and  the  waves  are  colourless 
through  the  haze  of  the  rain,  all  but  two  or  three 
blind  sea-horses  swinging  out  of  the  mist  on  the 
ship's  dripping  weather  sides.  A  lamp  is  lighted  in 
the  wheel-house;  so  one  patch  of  yellow  light  falls 
on  the  green-painted  pistons  of  the  steering  gear  as 
they  snatch  up  the  rudder  chains.  A  big  sea  has 
got  home.  Her  stern  flies  up  in  the  lather  of  a 
freed  screw,  and  her  deck  from  poop  to  the  break  of 
the  foc's'le  goes  under  in  gray-green  water  level  as  a 
mill-race,  except  where  it  spouts  up  above  the 
donkey-engine  and  the  stored  derrick-booms.  For- 
ward there  is  nothing  but  this  glare;  aft,  the  inter- 
rupted wake  drives  far  to  leeward  a  cut  kite  string 
dropped  across  the  seas.  The  sole  thing  that  has 
any  rest  in  the  turmoil  is  the  jewelled,  unwinking 
eye  of  an  albatross,  who  is  beating  across  wind 
leisurely  and  unconcerned,  almost  within  hand's 
touch.  It  is  the  monstrous  egotism  of  that  eye  that 
makes  the  picture.  By  all  the  rules  of  art  there 
should  be  a  lighthouse  or  a  harbour  pier  in  the  back- 


78         FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

ground  to  show  that  everything  will  end  happily. 
But  there  is  not,  and  the  red  eye  does  not  care 
whether  the  thing  beneath  the  still  wings  stays  or 
staves. 

The  sister-panel  hangs  in  the  Indian  Ocean  and 
tells  a  story,  but  is  none  the  worse  for  that.  Here 
you  have  hot  tropical  sunlight  and  a  foreshore 
clothed  in  stately  palms  running  out  into  a  still  and 
steamy  sea  burnished  steel  blue.  Along  the  fore- 
shore, questing  as  a  wounded  beast  quests  for  lair, 
hurries  a  loaded  steamer  never  built  for  speed. 
Consequently,  she  tears  and  threshes  the  water  to 
pieces,  and  piles  it  under  her  nose  and  cannot  put  it 
under  her  cleanly.  Coir-coloured  cargo  bales  are 
stacked  round  both  masts,  and  her  decks  are 
crammed  and  double-crammed  with  dark-skinned  pas- 
sengers— from  the  foc's'le  where  they  interfere  with 
the  crew  to  the  stern  where  they  hamper  the  wheel. 

The  funnel  is  painted  blue  on  yellow,  giving  her  a 
holiday  air,  a  little  out  of  keeping  with  the  yellow 
and  black  cholera  flag  at  her  main.  She  dare  not 
stop;  she  must  not  communicate  with  any  one. 
There  are  leprous  streaks  of  lime-wash  trickling  down 
her  plates  for  a  sign  of  this.  So  she  threshes  on 
down  the  glorious  coast,  she  and  her  swarming 
passengers,  with  the  sickness  that  destroyeth  in  the 
noonday  eating  out  her  heart. 

Yet  another,  the  pick  of  all  the  East  rooms,  before 
we  have  done  with  blue  water.     Most  of  the  nations 


HALF-A-DOZEN  PICTURES  79 

of  the  earth  are  at  issue  under  a  stretch  of  white 
awning  above  a  crowded  deck.  The  cause  of  the 
dispute,  a  deep  copper  bowl  full  of  rice  and  fried 
onions,  is  upset  in  the  foreground.  Malays, 
Lascars,  Hindus,  Chinese,  Japanese,  Burmans — 
the  whole  gamut  of  race-tints,  from  saffron  to  tar- 
black — are  twisting  and  writhing  round  it,  while 
their  vermilion,  cobalt,  amber,  and  emerald  turbans 
and  head-cloths  are  lying  under  foot.  Pressed 
against  the  yellow  ochre  of  the  iron  bulwarks  to  left 
and  right  are  frightened  women  and  children  in 
turquoise  and  isabella-coloured  clothes.  They  are 
half  protected  by  mounds  of  upset  bedding,  straw 
mats,  red  lacquer  boxes,  and  plaited  bamboo 
trunks,  mixed  up  with  tin  plates,  brass  and  copper 
hukas,  silver  opium  pipes,  Chinese  playing  cards,  and 
properties  enough  to  drive  half-a-dozen  artists  wild. 
In  the  centre  of  the  crowd  of  furious  half-naked  men, 
the  fat  bare  back  of  a  Burman,  tattooed  from 
collar-bone  to  waist-cloth  with  writhing  patterns  of 
red  and  blue  devils,  holds  the  eye  first.  It  is  a 
wicked  back.  Beyond  it  is  the  flicker  of  a  Malay 
kris.  A  blue,  red,  and  yellow  macaw  chained  to  a 
stanchion  spreads  his  wings  against  the  sun  in  an 
ecstasy  of  terror.  Half-a-dozen  red-gold  pines  and 
bananas  have  been  knocked  down  from  their  ripening- 
places,  and  are  lying  between  the  feet  of  the  fighters. 
One  pine  has  rolled  against  the  long  brown  fur  of  a 
muzzled  bear.     His  owner,  a  bushy-bearded  Hindu, 


8o        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

kneels  over  the  animal,  his  body-cloth  thrown 
clear  of  a  hard  brown  arm,  his  fingers  ready  to  loose 
the  muzzle-strap.  The  ship's  cook,  in  blood-stained 
white,  watches  from  the  butcher's  shop,  and  a 
black  Zanzibar  stoker  grins  through  the  bars  of  the 
engine-room  hatch,  one  ray  of  sun  shining  straight 
into  his  pink  mouth.  The  officer  of  the  watch,  a 
red-whiskered  man,  is  kneeling  down  on  the  bridge  to 
peer  through  the  railings,  and  is  shifting  a  long,  lean 
black  revolver  from  his  left  hand  to  his  right.  The 
faithful  sunlight  that  puts  everything  into  place, 
gives  his  whiskers  and  the  hair  on  the  back  of  his 
tanned  wrist  just  the  colour  of  the  copper  pot,  the 
bear's  fur  and  the  trampled  pines.  For  the  rest, 
there  is  the  blue  sea  beyond  the  awnings. 

Three  years'  hard  work,  besides  the  special  knowl- 
edge of  a  lifetime,  would  be  needed  to  copy — even 
to  copy — this  picture.  Mr.  So-and-so,  R.  A.,  could 
undoubtedly  draw  the  bird;  Mr.  Such-another 
(equally  R.  A.)  the  bear;  and  scores  of  gentlemen  the 
still  life;  but  who  would  be  the  man  to  pull  the 
whole  thing  together  and  make  it  the  riotous,  tossing 
cataract  of  colour  and  life  that  it  is?  And  when  it 
was  done,  some  middle-aged  person  from  the  prov- 
inces, who  had  never  seen  a  pineapple  out  of  a  plate, 
or  a  kris  out  of  the  South  Kensington,  would  say 
that  it  did  not  remind  him  of  something  that  it 
ought  to  remind  him  of,  and  therefore  that  it  was 
bad.     If  the   gallery   could   be   bequeathed   to  the 


HALF-A-DOZEN  PICTURES  81 

nation,  something  might,  perhaps,  be  gained,  but  the 
nation  would  complain  of  the  draughts  and  the 
absence  of  chairs.  But  no  matter.  In  another 
world  we  shall  see  certain  gentlemen  set  to  tickle 
the  backs  of  Circe's  swine  through  all  eternity. 
Also,  they  will  have  to  tickle  with  their  bare  hands! 

The  Japanese  rooms,  visited  and  set  in  order  for 
the  second  time,  hold  more  pictures  than  could  be 
described  in  a  month;  but  most  of  them  are  small 
and,  excepting  always  the  light,  within  human 
compass.  One,  however,  might  be  difficult.  It  was 
an  unexpected  gift,  picked  up  in  a  Tokio  bye  street 
after  dark.  Half  the  town  was  out  for  a  walk, 
and  all  the  people's  clothes  were  indigo,  and  so  were 
the  shadows,  and  most  of  the  paper-lanterns  were 
drops  of  blood  red.  By  the  light  of  smoking  oil- 
lamps  people  were  selling  flowers  and  shrubs — 
wicked  little  dwarf  pines,  stunted  peach  and  plum 
trees,  wistaria  bushes  clipped  and  twisted  out  of  all 
likeness  to  wholesome  plants,  leaning  and  leering 
out  of  green-glaze  pots.  In  the  flickering  of  the 
yellow  flames,  these  forced  cripples  and  the  yellow 
faces  above  them  reeled  to  and  fro  fantastically  all 
together.  As  the  light  steadied  they  would  return 
to  the  pretence  of  being  green  things  till  a  pufF  of  the 
warm  night  wind  among  the  flares  set  the  whole 
line  off  again  in  a  crazy  dance  of  dwergs,  their 
shadows  capering  on  the  house  fronts  behind  them. 

At  a  corner  of  a  street,  some  rich  men  had  got 


82        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

together  and  left  unguarded  all  the  gold,  diamonds, 
and  rubies  of  the  East;  but  when  you  came  near  you 
saw  that  this  treasure  was  only  a  gathering  of  gold- 
fish in  glass  globes — yellow,  white,  and  red  fish,  with 
from  three  to  five  forked  tails  apiece  and  eyes  that 
bulged  far  beyond  their  heads.  There  were  wooden 
pans  full  of  tiny  ruby  fish,  and  little  children  with  nets 
dabbled  and  shrieked  in  chase  of  some  special  beauty, 
and  the  frightened  fish  kicked  up  showers  of  little 
pearls  with  their  tails.  The  children  carried  lanterns 
in  the  shape  of  small  red  paper  fish  bobbing  at  the 
end  of  slivers  of  bamboo,  and  these  drifted  through 
the  crowd  like  a  strayed  constellation  of  baby  stars. 
When  the  children  stood  at  the  edge  of  a  canal  and 
called  down  to  unseen  friends  in  boats  the  pink 
lights  were  all  reflected  orderly  below.  The  light  of 
the  thousand  small  lights  in  the  street  went  straight 
up  into  the  darkness  among  the  interlacing  telegraph 
wires,  and  just  at  the  edge  of  the  shining  haze,  on  a 
sort  of  pigeon-trap,  forty  feet  above  ground,  sat  a 
Japanese  fireman,  wrapped  up  in  his  cloak,  keeping 
watch  against  fires.  He  looked  unpleasantly  like  a 
Bulgarian  atrocity  or  a  Burmese  "deviation  from 
the  laws  of  humanity,"  being  very  still  and  all 
huddled  up  in  his  roost.  That  was  a  superb  picture 
and  it  arranged  itself  to  admiration.  Now,  disre- 
garding these  things  and  others — wonders  and 
miracles  all — men  are  content  to  sit  in  studios  and, 
by  light  that  is  not  light,  to  fake  subjects  from  pots 


HALF-A-DOZEN  PICTURES  83 

and  pans  and  rags  and  bricks  that  are  called  pieces 
of  colour.  Their  collection  of  rubbish  costs  in  the 
end  quite  as  much  as  a  ticket,  a  first-class  one,  to  new 
worlds  where  the  "props"  are  given  away  with  the 
sunshine.  To  do  anything  because  it  is  or  may  not 
be  new  on  the  market  is  wickedness  that  carries  its 
own  punishment;  but  surely  there  must  be  things  in 
this  world  paintable  other  and  beyond  those  that  lie 
between  the  North  Cape,  say,  and  Algiers.  For  the 
sake  of  the  pictures,  putting  aside  the  dear  delight  of 
the  gamble,  it  might  be  worth  while  to  venture  out  a 
little  beyond  the  regular  circle  of  subjects  and — see 
what  happens.  If  a  man  can  draw  one  thing,  it  has 
been  said,  he  can  draw  anything.  At  the  most  he 
can  but  fail,  and  there  are  several  matters  in  the 
world  worse  than  failure.  Betting  on  a  certainty, 
for  instance,  or  playing  with  nicked  cards  is  im- 
moral, and  secures  expulsion  from  clubs.  Keeping 
deliberately  to  one  set  line  of  work  because  you 
know  you  can  do  it  and  are  certain  to  get  money  by 
so  doing  is,  on  the  other  hand,  counted  a  virtue,  and 
secures  admission  to  clubs.  There  must  be  a  middle 
way  somewhere,  as  there  must  be  somewhere  an 
unmarried  man  with  no  position,  reputation,  or 
other  vanity  to  lose,  who  most  keenly  wants  to  find 
out  what  his  palette  is  set  for  in  this  life.  He  will 
pack  his  steamer-trunk  and  get  into  the  open  to 
wrestle  with  effects  that  he  can  never  reproduce. 
All  the  same  his  will  be  a  superb  failure. 


"Captains  Courageous" 

From  Yokohama  to  Montreal  is  a  long  day's  journey, 
and  the  forepart  is  uninviting.  In  three  voyages 
out  of  five,  the  North  Pacific,  too  big  to  lie  altogether 
idle,  too  idle  to  get  hands  about  the  business  of  a 
storm,  sulks  and  smokes  like  a  chimney;  the  pas- 
sengers fresh  from  Japan  heat  wither  in  the  chill,  and 
a  clammy  dew  distils  from  the  rigging.  That  gray 
monotony  of  sea  is  not  at  all  homelike,  being  as  yet 
new  and  not  used  to  the  procession  of  keels.  It 
holds  a  very  few  pictures  and  the  best  of  its  stories — 
those  relating  to  seal-poaching  among  the  Kuriles 
and  the  Russian  rookeries — are  not  exactly  fit  for 
publication.  There  is  a  man  in  Yokohama  who  in 
a  previous  life  burned  galleons  with  Drake.  He  is  a 
gentleman  adventurer  of  the  largest  and  most 
resourceful — by  instinct  a  carver  of  kingdoms,  a 
ruler  of  men  on  the  high  seas,  and  an  inveterate 
gambler  against  Death.  Because  he  supplies  noth- 
ing more  than  sealskins  to  the  wholesale  dealers  at 
home,  the  fame  of  his  deeds,  his  brilliant  fights,  his 
more  brilliant  escapes,  and  his  most  brilliant  strategy 
will  be  lost  among  sixty-ton  schooners,  or  told  only  in 
the  mouths  of  drunken  seamen  whom  none  believe. 

84 


"CAPTAINS  COURAGEOUS"  85 

Now  there  sits  a  great  spirit  under  the  palm  trees 
of  the  Navigator  Group,  a  thousand  leagues  to  the 
south,  and  he,  crowned  with  roses  and  laurels, 
strings  together  the  pearls  of  those  parts.  When  he 
has  done  with  this  down  there  perhaps  he  will  turn 
to  the  Smoky  Seas  and  the  Wonderful  Adventures  of 

Captain Then  there  will  be  a  tale  to  listen  to. 

But  the  first  touch  of  dry  land  makes  the  sea  and 
all  upon  it  unreal.  Five  minutes  after  the  traveller 
is  on  the  C.  P.  R.  train  at  Vancouver  there  is  no 
romance  of  blue  water,  but  another  kind — the  life 
of  the  train  into  which  he  comes  to  grow  as  into  life 
aboard  ship.  A  week  on  wheels  turns  a  man  into  a 
part  of  the  machine.  He  knows  when  the  train  will 
stop  to  water,  wait  for  news  of  the  trestle  ahead, 
drop  the  dining-car,  slip  into  a  sliding  to  let  the 
West-bound  mail  go  by,  or  yell  through  the  thick 
night  for  an  engine  to  help  push  up  the  bank.  The 
snort,  the  snap  and  whine  of  the  air-brakes  have  a 
meaning  for  him,  and  he  learns  to  distinguish  between 
noises — between  the  rattle  of  a  loose  lamp  and  the 
ugly  rattle  of  small  stones  on  a  scarped  embankment 
— between  the  "Hoot!  toot!"  that  scares  wandering 
cows  from  the  line,  and  the  dry  roar  of  the  engine  at 
the  distance-signal.  In  England  the  railway  came 
late  into  a  settled  country  fenced  round  with  the 
terrors  of  the  law,  and  it  has  remained  ever  since 
just  a  little  outside  daily  life — a  thing  to  be  re- 
spected. 


86        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

Here  it  strolls  along,  with  its  hands  in  its  pockets 
and  a  straw  in  its  mouth,  on  the  heels  of  the  rough- 
hewn  trail  or  log  road — a  platformless,  regulationless 
necessity;  and  it  is  treated  even  by  sick  persons  and 
young  children  with   a  familiarity  that   sometimes 
affects  the  death-rate.     There  was  a  small  maiden 
aged   seven,  who  honoured   our  smoking  compart- 
ment with  her  presence  when  other  excitements  failed, 
and  it  was  she  that  said  to  the  conductor,  "When 
do  we  change  crews?     I  want  to  pick  water-lilies — 
yellow  ones."    A  mere  halt  she  knew  would  not  suffice 
for  her  needs;  but  the  regular  fifteen-minute  stop, 
when  the  red-painted  tool  chest  was  taken  off  the 
rear  car  and  a  new  gang  came  aboard.    The  big  man 
bent  down  to  little  Impudence — "Want  to  pick  lilies, 
eh  ?    What  would  you  do  if  the  cars  went  on  and  took 
mamma  away,  Sis?"     "Take  the  next  train,"  she  re- 
plied," and  tell  the  conductor  to  send  me  to  Brooklyn. 
I  live  there."     "Buts'pose  he  wouldn't?"     "He'd 
have  to,"  said  Young  America.    "  I'd  be  a  lost  child." 
Now,  from  the  province  of  Alberta  to  Brooklyn, 
U.  S.  A.,  may  be  three  thousand  miles.     A  great 
stretch  of  that  distance  is  as  new  as  the  day  before 
yesterday,  and  strewn  with  townships  in  every  stage 
of  growth  from  the  city  of  one  round  house,  two  log 
huts,  and  a  Chinese  camp  somewhere  in  the  foot  hills 
of  the  Selkirks,  to  Winnipeg  with  her  league-long 
main  street  and  her  warring  newspapers.     Just  at 
present  there  is  an  epidemic  of  politics  in  Manitoba, 


"CAPTAINS  COURAGEOUS"  87 

and  brass  bands  and  notices  of  committee  meetings 
are  splashed  about  the  towns.  By  reason  of  their 
closeness  to  the  States  they  have  caught  the  con- 
tagion of  foul-mouthedness,  and  accusations  of 
bribery,  corruption,  and  evil-living  are  many.  It 
is  sweet  to  find  a  little  baby-city,  with  only  three  men 
in  it  who  can  handle  type,  cursing  and  swearing 
across  the  illimitable  levels  for  all  the  world  as 
though  it  were  a  grown-up  Christian  centre. 

All  the  new  towns  have  their  own  wants  to  con- 
sider, and  the  first  of  these  is  a  railway.  If  the 
town  is  on  a  line  already,  then  a  new  line  to  tap  the 
back  country;  but  at  all  costs  a  line.  For  this  it 
will  sell  its  corrupted  soul,  and  then  be  very  indig- 
nant because  the  railway  before  which  it  has 
grovelled  rides  rough-shod  over  the  place. 

Each  new  town  believes  itself  to  be  a  possible 
Winnipeg  until  the  glamour  of  the  thing  is  a  little 
worn  off,  and  the  local  paper,  sliding  down  the  pole 
of  Pride  with  the  hind  legs  of  despair,  says  defiantly: 
"At  least,  a  veterinary  surgeon  and  a  drug-store 
would  meet  with  encouragement  in  our  midst,  and  it 
is  a  fact  that  five  new  buildings  have  been  erected  in 
our  midst  since  the  spring."  From  a  distance  noth- 
ing is  easier  than  to  smile  at  this  sort  of  thing,  but  he 
must  have  a  cool  head  who  can  keep  his  pulse  level 
when  just  such  a  wildcat  town — ten  houses,  two 
churches,  and  a  line  of  rails — gets  "on  the  boom." 
The  reader  at  home  says,  "Yes,  but  it's  all  a  lie." 


88         FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

i 

It  may  be,  but — did  men  lie  about  Denver,  Leadville, 
Ballarat,  Broken  Hill,  Portland,  or  Winnipeg  twenty 
years  ago — or  Adelaide  when  town  lots  went  begging 
within  the  memory  of  middle-aged  men  ?  Did  they 
lie  about  Vancouver  six  years  since,  or  Creede  not 
twenty  months  gone?  Hardly;  and  it  is  just  this 
knowledge  that  leads  the  passer-by  to  give  ear  to  the 
wildest  statements  of  the  wildest  towns.  Anything 
is  possible,  especially  among  the  Rockies  where  the 
minerals  lie,  over  and  above  the  mining  towns,  the 
centres  of  ranching  country,  and  the  supply  towns  to 
the  farming  districts.  There  are  literally  scores 
upon  scores  of  lakelets  in  the  hills,  buried  in  woods 
now,  that  before  twenty  years  are  run  will  be  crowded 
summer  resorts.  You  in  England  have  no  idea  of 
what  summering  means  in  the  States,  and  less  of  the 
amount  of  money  that  is  spent  on  the  yearly  holiday. 
People  have  no  more  than  just  begun  to  discover  the 
place  called  the  Banff  Hot  Springs,  two  days  west  of 
Winnipeg.1  In  a  little  time  they  will  know  half-a- 
dozen  spots  not  a  day's  ride  from  Montreal,  and  it  is 
along  that  line  that  money  will  be  made.  In  those 
days,  too,  wheat  will  be  grown  for  the  English 
market  four  hundred  miles  north  of  the  present 
fields  on  the  west  side;  and  British  Columbia, 
perhaps  the  loveliest  land  in  the  world  next  to  New 
Zealand,  will  have  her  own  line  of  six  thousand  ton 
steamers  to  Australia,  and  the  British  investor  will 

xSee  p.  2or. 


"CAPTAINS  COURAGEOUS"  89 

no  longer  throw  away  his  money  on  hellicat  South 
American  republics,  or  give  it  as  a  hostage  to  the 
States.     He  will  keep  it  in  the  family  as  a  wise  man 
should.     Then  the  towns  that  are  to-day  the  only 
names  in  the  wilderness,   yes,   and   some  of  those 
places  marked  on  the  map  as  Hudson  Bay  Ports  will 
be  cities,  because — but  it  is  hopeless  to  make  peo- 
ple understand  that   actually   and   indeed.     We  do 
possess   an   Empire  of  which   Canada   is   only  one 
portion — an  Empire  which  is  not  bounded  by  election- 
returns  on  the  North  and  Eastbourne  riots  on  the 
South — an  Empire  that  has  not  yet  been  scratched. 
Let  us   return  to  the  new  towns.     Three  times 
within  one  year  did  fortune  come  knocking  to  the 
door  of  a  man  I  know.     Once  at  Seattle,  when  that 
town  was  a  gray  blur  after  a  fire;  once  at  Tacoma,  in 
the   days   when   the   steam-tram    ran   off  the   rails 
twice  a  week;  and  once  at  Spokane  Falls.     But  in 
the  roar  of  the  land-boom  he  did  not  hear  her,  and 
she  went  away  leaving  him  only  a  tenderness  akin  to 
weakness  for  all  new  towns,  and  a  desire,  mercifully 
limited  by  lack  of  money,  to  gamble  in  every  one  of 
them.     Of  all  the  excitements  that  life  offers  there 
are  few  to  be  compared  with  the  whirl  of  a  red-hot 
boom;  also  it  is  strictly  moral,  because  you  do  fairly 
earn    your    unearned    increment    by    labour    and 
perspiration  and  sitting  up  far  into  the  night — by 
working  like  a  fiend,  as  all  pioneers  must  do.     And 
consider  all  that  is  in  it.     The  headlong  stampede 


9o        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

to  the  new  place;  the  money  dashed  down  like 
counters  for  merest  daily  bread;  the  arrival  of  the 
piled  cars  whence  the  raw  material  of  a  city — men, 
lumber,  and  shingle — are  shot  on  to  the  not  yet 
nailed  platform;  the  slashing  out  and  pegging  down 
of  roads  across  the  blank  face  of  the  wilderness;  the 
heaving  up  amid  shouts  and  yells  of  the  city's  one 
electric  light — a  raw  sizzling  arc  atop  of  an  unbarked 
pine  pole;  the  sweating,  jostling  mob  at  the  sale  of 
town-lots;  the  roar  of  "Let  the  woman  have  it!" 
that  stops  all  bidding  when  the  one  other  woman  in 
the  place  puts  her  price  on  a  plot;  the  packed  real 
estate  offices;  the  real  estate  agents  themselves,  lost 
novelists  of  prodigious  imagination;  the  gorgeous 
pink  and  blue  map  of  the  town,  hung  up  in  the  bar- 
room, with  every  railroad  from  Portland  to  Portland 
meeting  in  its  heart;  the  misspelled  curse  against 
"this  dam  hole  in  the  ground"  scrawled  on  the 
flank  of  a  strayed  freight-car  by  some  man  who  had 
lost  his  money  and  gone  away;  the  conferences  at 
street  corners  of  syndicates  six  hours  established  by 
men  not  twenty-five  years  old;  the  out-spoken 
contempt  for  the  next  town,  also  "on  the  boom," 
and,  therefore,  utterly  vile;  the  unceasing  tramp  of 
heavy  feet  on  the  board  pavement,  where  stranger 
sometimes  turns  on  stranger  in  an  agony  of  convic- 
tion, and,  shaking  him  by  the  shoulder,  shouts  in 
his  ear,  "By  G — d!  Isn't  it  grand?  Isn't  it 
glorious?"  and  last,  the  sleep  of  utterly  worn-out 


"CAPTAINS  COURAGEOUS"  91 

men,  three  in  each  room  of  the  shanty  hotel:  "All 
meals  two  dollars.  All  drinks  thirty-five  cents. 
No  washing  done  here.  The  manager  not  responsible 
for  anything."  Does  the  bald  catalogue  of  these 
recitals  leave  you  cold?  It  is  possible;  but  it  is  also 
possible  after  three  days  in  a  new  town  to  set  the  full 
half  of  a  truck  load  of  archbishops  fighting  for 
corner  lots  as  they  never  fought  for  mitre  or  crozier. 
There  is  a  contagion  in  a  boom  as  irresistible  as  that 
of  a  panic  in  a  theatre. 

After  a  while  things  settle  down,  and  then  the 
carpenter,  who  is  also  an  architect,  can  lay  his  bare 
arms  across  the  bar  and  sell  them  to  the  highest 
bidder,  for  the  houses  are  coming  up  like  toadstools 
after  rain.  The  men  who  do  not  build  cheer  those 
who  do,  in  that  building  means  backing  your  belief 
in  your  town — yours  to  you  and  peculiarly  con- 
found all  other  towns  whatsoever!  Behind  the 
crowd  of  business  men  the  weekly  town  paper  plays 
as  a  stockwhip  plays  on  a  mob  of  cattle!  There  is 
honour,  heaped,  extravagant,  imperial  for  the  good — 
the  employer  of  labour,  the  builder  of  stores,  the 
spender  of  money;  there  is  abuse,  savage  and  out- 
rageous, for  the  bad,  the  man  who  "buys  out  of  the 
town,"  the  man  who  intends  to  go,  the  sitter  on  the 
fence;  with  persuasion  and  invitation  in  prose, 
verse,  and  zincograph  for  all  that  outside  world 
which  prefers  to  live  in  cities  other  than  Ours. 

Now   the   editor,    as   often    as   not,    begins    as    a 


92        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

mercenary  and  ends  as  a  patriot.  This,  too,  is  all  of 
a  piece  with  human  nature.  A  few  years  later,  if 
Providence  is  good,  comes  the  return  for  judicious 
investment.  Perhaps  the  town  has  stood  the  test 
of  boom,  and  that  which  was  clapboard  is  now 
Milwaukee  brick  or  dressed  stone,  vile  in  design  but 
permanent.  The  shanty  hotel  is  the  Something 
House,  with  accommodation  for  two  hundred  guests. 
The  manager  who  served  you  in  his  shirt-sleeves  as 
his  own  hotel  clerk,  is  gorgeous  in  broadcloth,  and 
needs  to  be  reminded  of  the  first  meeting.  Suburban 
villas  more  or  less  adorn  the  flats,  from  which  the 
liveliest  fancy  (and  fancy  was  free  in  the  early  days) 
hung  back.  Horse-cars  jingle  where  the  prairie 
schooner  used  to  stick  fast  in  the  mud-hole,  scooped 
to  that  end  opposite  the  saloon;  and  there  is  a  Belt 
Electric  Service  paying  fabulous  dividends.  Then, 
do  you,  feeling  older  than  Methuselah  and  twice  as 
important,  go  forth  and  patronize  things  in  general, 
while  the  manager  tells  you  exactly  what  sort  of 
millionaire  you  would  have  been  if  you  had  "stayed 
by  the  town." 

Or  else — the  bottom  has  tumbled  out  of  the 
boom,  and  the  town  new  made  is  dead — dead  as  a 
young  man's  corpse  laid  out  in  the  morning.  Success 
was  not  justified  by  success.  Of  ten  thousand  not 
three  hundred  remain,  and  these  live  in  huts  on  the 
outskirts  of  the  brick  streets.  The  hotel,  with  its 
suites  of  musty  rooms,  is  a  big  tomb;  the  factory 


"CAPTAINS  COURAGEOUS"  93 

chimneys  are  cold;  the  villas  have  no  glass  in  them, 
and  the  fire-weed  glows  in  the  centre  of  the  drive- 
ways, mocking  the  arrogant  advertisements  in  the 
empty  shops.  There  is  nothing  to  do  except  to  catch 
trout  in  the  stream  that  was  to  have  been  defiled 
by  the  city  sewage.  A  two-pounder  lies  fanning 
himself  just  in  the  cool  of  the  main  culvert,  where 
the  alders  have  crept  up  to  the  city  wall.  You 
pay  your  money  and,  more  or  less,  you  take  your 
choice. 

By  the  time  that  man  has  seen  these  things  and  a 
few  others  that  go  with  a  boom  he  may  say  that  he 
has  lived,  and  talk  with  his  enemies  in  the  gate.  He 
has  heard  the  Arabian  Nights  retold  and  knows  the 
inward  kernel  of  that  romance,  which  some  little 
folk  say  is  vanished.  Here  they  lie  in  their  false 
teeth,  for  Cortes  is  not  dead,  nor  Drake,  and  Sir 
Philip  Sydney  dies  every  few  months  if  you  know 
where  to  look.  The  adventurers  and  captains 
courageous  of  old  have  only  changed  their  dress  a 
little  and  altered  their  employment  to  suit  the 
world  in  which  they  move.  Clive  came  down  from 
Lobengula's  country  a  few  months  ago  protesting 
that  there  was  an  empire  there,  and  finding  very  few 
that  believed.  Hastings  studied  a  map  of  South 
Africa  in  a  corrugated  iron  hut  at  Johannesburg 
ten  years  ago.  Since  then  he  has  altered  the  map 
considerably  to  the  advantage  of  the  Empire,  but 
the  heart  of  the  Empire  is  set  on  ballot-boxes  and 


94        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

small  lies.  The  illustrious  Don  Quixote  to-day 
lives  on  the  north,  coast  of  Australia  where  he  has 
found  the  treasure  of  a  sunken  Spanish  galleon. 
Now  and  again  he  destroys  black  fellows  who  hide 
under  his  bed  to  spear  him.  Young  Hawkins,  with 
a  still  younger  Boscawen  for  his  second,  was  till  last 
year  chasing  slave-dhows  round  Tajurrah;  they  have 
sent  him  now  to  the  Zanzibar  coast  to  be  grilled  into 
an  admiral;  and  the  valorous  Sandoval  has  been 
holding  the  "Republic"  of  Mexico  by  the  throat 
any  time  these  fourteen  years  gone.  The  others, 
big  men  all  and  not  very  much  afraid  of  responsi- 
bility, are  selling  horses,  breaking  trails,  drinking 
sangaree,  running  railways  beyond  the  timberline, 
swimming  rivers,  blowing  up  tree-stumps,  and 
making  cities  where  no  cities  were,  in  all  the  five 
quarters  of  the  world.  Only  people  will  not  believe 
this  when  you  tell  them.  They  are  too  near  things 
and  a  great  deal  too  well  fed.  So  they  say  of  the 
most  cold-blooded  realism:  "This  is  romance. 
How  interesting!"  And  of  over-handled,  thumb- 
marked  realism:  "This  is  indeed  romance!"  It  is 
the  next  century  that,  looking  over  its  own,  will  see 
the  heroes  of  our  time  clearly. 

Meantime  this  earth  of  ours — we  hold  a  fair  slice 
of  it  so  far — is  full  of  wonders  and  miracles  and 
mysteries  and  marvels,  and,  in  default,  it  is  good  to 
go  up  and  down  seeing  and  hearing  tell  of  them  all. 


On  One  Side  Only 

New  Oxford,  U.  S.  A.,  June-July  1892. 
"The  truth  is,"  said  the  man  in  the  train,  "that  we 
live  in  a  tropical  country  for  three  months  of  the 
year,  only  we  won't  recognize  it.  Look  at  this."  He 
handed  over  a  long  list  of  deaths  from  heat  that 
enlivened  the  newspapers.  All  the  cities  where 
men  live  at  breaking-strain  were  sending  in  their 
butcher-bills,  and  the  papers  of  the  cities,  themselves 
apostles  of  the  Gospel  of  Rush,  were  beseeching 
their  readers  to  keep  cool  and  not  to  overwork 
themselves  while  the  hot  wave  was  upon  them. 
The  rivers  were  patched  and  barred  with  sun-dried 
pebbles;  the  logs  and  loggers  were  drought-bound 
somewhere  up  the  Connecticut;  and  the  grass  at 
the  side  of  the  track  was  burned  in  a  hundred 
places  by  the  sparks  from  locomotives.  Men — 
hatless,  coatless,  and  gasping — lay  in  the  shade  of 
that  station  where  only  a  few  months  ago  the  glass 
stood  at  30  below  zero.  Now  the  readings  were  98 
degrees  in  the  shade.  Main  Street — do  you  remem- 
ber Main  Street  of  a  little  village  locked  up  in  the 
snow  this  spring?1 — had  given  up  the  business  of  life, 
and  an  American  flag  with  some  politician's  name 

1  See  "In  Sight  of  Monadnock." 

95 


96        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

printed  across  the  bottom  hung  down  across  the 
street  as  stiff  as  a  board.  There  were  men  with 
fans  and  alpaca  coats  curled  up  in  splint  chairs  in  the 
verandah  of  the  one  hotel — among  them  an  ex- 
President  of  the  United  States.  He  completed 
the  impression  that  the  furniture  of  the  entire 
country  had  been  turned  out  of  doors  for  summer 
cleaning  in  the  absence  of  all  the  inhabitants.  Noth- 
ing looks  so  hopelessly  "ex"  as  a  President  "returned 
to  stores."  The  stars  and  stripes  signified  that  the 
Presidential  Campaign  had  opened  in  Main  Street — 
opened  and  shut  up  again.  Politics  evaporate  at 
summer  heat  when  all  hands  are  busy  with  the  last 
of  the  hay,  and,  as  the  farmers  put  it,  "Vermont's 
bound  to  go  Republican."  The  custom  of  the  land 
is  to  drag  the  scuffle  and  dust  of  an  election  over 
several  months — to  the  improvement  of  business  and 
manners;  but  the  noise  of  that  war  comes  faintly  up 
the  valley  of  the  Connecticut  and  is  lost  among  the 
fiddling  of  the  locusts.  Their  music  puts,  as  it 
were,  a  knife-edge  upon  the  heat  of  the  day.  In 
truth,  it  is  a  tropical  country  for  the  time  being. 
Thunderstorms  prowl  and  growl  round  the  belted 
hills,  spit  themselves  away  in  a  few  drops  of  rain, 
and  leave  the  air  more  dead  than  before.  In  the 
woods,  where  even  the  faithful  springs  are  beginning 
to  run  low,  the  pines  and  balsams  have  thrown  out 
all  their  fragrance  upon  the  heat  and  wait  for  the 
wind  to  bring  news  of  the  rain.     The  clematis,  wild 


ON  ONE  SIDE  ONLY  97 

carrot,  and  all  the  gipsy-flowers  camped  by  sufferance 
between  fence  line  and  road  rut  are  masked  in  white 
dust,  and  the  goldenrod  of  the  pastures  that  are 
burned  to  flax-colour  burns  too  like  burnished  brass. 
A  pillar  of  dust  on  the  long  hog-back  of  the  road 
across  the  hills  shows  where  a  team  is  lathering 
between  farms,  and  the  roofs  of  the  wooden  houses 
flicker  in  the  haze  of  their  own  heat.  Overhead  the 
chicken-hawk  is  the  only  creature  at  work,  and  his 
shrill  kite-like  call  sends  the  gaping  chickens  from 
the  dust-bath  in  haste  to  their  mothers.  The  red 
squirrel  as  usual  feigns  business  of  importance 
among  the  butternuts,  but  this  is  pure  priggishness. 
When  the  passer-by  is  gone  he  ceases  chattering  and 
climbs  back  to  where  the  little  breezes  can  stir  his 
tail  plumes.  From  somewhere  under  the  lazy  fold  of 
a  meadow  comes  the  drone  of  a  mowing-machine 
among  the  hay — its  whurr-ao,  and  the  grunt  of  the 
tired  horses. 

Houses  are  only  meant  to  eat  and  sleep  in.  The 
rest  of  life  is  lived  at  full  length  in  the  verandah. 
When  traffic  is  brisk  three  whole  teams  will  pass  that 
verandah  in  one  day,  and  it  is  necessary  to  exchange 
news  about  the  weather  and  the  prospects  for  oats. 
When  oats-  are  in  there  will  be  slack  time  on  the 
farm,  and  the  farmers  will  seriously  think  of  doing 
the  hundred  things  that  they  have  let  slide  during  the 
summer.  They  will  undertake  this  and  that,  "when 
they  get  around  to  it."     The  phrase  translated  is  the 


98        FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

exact  equivalent  to  the  rn.an.a71a  of  the  Spaniard, 
the  kul  hojaiga  of  Upper  India,  the  yuroshii  of  the 
Japanese,  and  the  long  drawled  taihoa  of  the  Maori. 
The  only  person  who  "gets  around"  in  this  weather 
is  the  summer  boarder — the  refugee  from  the  burning 
cities  of  the  Plain,  and  she  is  generally  a  woman. 
She  walks,  and  botanizes,  and  kodaks,  and  strips  the 
bark  off  the  white  birch  to  make  blue-ribboned 
waste-paper  baskets,  and  the  farmer  regards  her 
with  wonder.  More  does  he  wonder  still  at  the  city 
clerk  in  a  blazer,  who  has  two  weeks'  holiday  in  the 
year  and,  apparently,  unlimited  money,  which  he 
earns  in  the  easiest  possible  way  by  "sitting  at  a 
desk  and  writing."  The  farmer's  wife  sees  the 
fashions  of  the  summer  boarder,  and  between  them 
man  and  woman  get  a  notion  of  the  beauties  of  city 
life  for  which  their  children  may  live  to  blame  them. 
The  blazer  and  the  town-made  gown  are  innocent 
recruiting  sergeants  for  the  city  brigades;  and  since 
one  man's  profession  is  ever  a  mystery  to  his  fellow, 
blazer  and  gown  believe  that  the  farmer  must  be 
happy  and  content.  A  summer  resort  is  one  of  the 
thousand  windows  whence  to  watch  the  thousand 
aspects  of  life  in  the  Atlantic  States.  Remember 
that  between  June  and  September  it  is  the  desire  of 
all  who  can  to  get  away  from  the  big  cities — not  on 
account  of  wantonness,  as  people  leave  London — but 
because  of  actual  heat.  So  they  get  away  in  their 
millions  with  their  millions — the  wives  of  the  rich 


ON  ONE  SIDE  ONLY  99 

men  for  five  clear  months,  the  others  for  as  long  as 
they  can;  and,  like  drawing  like,  they  make  com- 
munities set  by  set,  breed  by  breed,  division  by 
division,  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land — 
from  Maine  and  the  upper  reaches  of  the  Saguenay, 
through  the  mountains  and  hot  springs  of  half-a- 
dozen  interior  States,  out  and  away  to  Sitka  in 
steamers.  Then  they  spend  money  on  hotel  bills, 
among  ten  thousand  farms,  on  private  companies 
who  lease  and  stock  land  for  sporting  purposes,  on 
yachts  and  canoes,  bicycles,  rods,  chalets,  cottages, 
reading-circles,  camps,  tents,  and  all  the  luxuries 
they  know.  But  the  luxury  of  rest  most  of  them  do 
not  know;  and  the  telephone  and  telegraph  are 
faithfully  dragged  after  them,  lest  their  men-folk 
should  for  a  moment  forget  the  ball  and  chain  at 
foot. 

For  sadness  with  laughter  at  bottom  there  are 
few  things  to  compare  with  the  sight  of  a  coatless, 
muddy-booted  millionaire,  his  hat  adorned  with 
trout-flies,  and  a  string  of  small  fish  in  his  hand, 
clawing  wildly  at  the  telephone  of  some  back-of- 
beyond  "health  resort."     Thus: 

"Hello!  Hello!  Yes.  Who's  there?  Oh,  all 
right.  Go  ahead.  Yes,  it's  me!  Hey,  what?  Re- 
peat. Sold  for  how  much?  Forty-four  and  a  half? 
Repeat.  No!  I  told  you  to  hold  on.  What? 
What?  Who  bought  at  that?  Say,  hold  a  minute. 
Cable   the   other   side.     No.     Hold   on.     I'll   come 


ioo      FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

down.  (Business  with  watch.)  "Tell  Schaefer  I'll 
see  him  to-morrow."  (Over  his  shoulder  to  his  wife, 
who  wears  half -hoop  diamond  rings  at  10  A.  M.) 
"Lizzie,  where's  my  grip?     I've  got  to  go  down." 

And  he  goes  down  to  eat  in  a  hotel  and  sleep  in 
his  shut-up  house.  Men  are  as  scarce  at  most  of  the 
summer  places  as  they  are  in  Indian  hill-stations  in 
late  April.  The  women  tell  you  that  they  can't  get 
away,  and  if  they  did  they  would  only  be  miserable 
to  get  back.  Now  whether  this  wholesale  abandon- 
ment of  husbands  by  wives  is  wholesome  let  those 
who  know  the  beauties  of  the  Anglo-Indian  system 
settle  for  themselves. 

That  both  men  and  women  need  rest  very  badly  a 
glance  at  the  crowded  hotel  tables  makes  plain — 
so  plain,  indeed,  that  the  foreigner  who  has  not  been 
taught  that  fuss  and  worry  are  in  themselves  honour- 
able wishes  sometimes  he  could  put  the  whole  unrest- 
ful  crowd  to  sleep  for  seventeen  hours  a  day.  I  have 
inquired  of  not  less  than  five  hundred  men  and 
women  in  various  parts  of  the  State  why  they  broke 
down  and  looked  so  gash.  And  the  men  said:  "If 
you  don't  keep  up  with  the  procession  in  America 
you  are  left";  and  the  women  smiled  an  evil  smile  and 
answered  that  no  outsider  yet  had  discovered  the 
real  cause  of  their  worry  and  strain,  or  why  their 
lives  were  arranged  to  work  with  the  largest  amount 
of  friction  in  the  shortest  given  time.  Now,  the 
men  can  be  left  to  their  own  folly,  but  the  cause  of 


ON  ONE  SIDE  ONLY  101 

the  women's  trouble  has  been  revealed  to  me.  It  is 
the  thing  called  "Help"  which  is  no  help.  In  the 
multitude  of  presents  that  the  American  man  has 
given  to  the  American  woman  (for  details  see  daily 
papers)  he  has  forgotten  or  is  unable  to  give  her 
good  servants,  and  that  sordid  trouble  runs  equally 
through  the  household  of  the  millionaire  or  the  flat  of 
the  small  city  man.  "Yes,  it's  easy  enough  to 
laugh,"  said  one  woman  passionately,  "we  are  worn 
out,  and  our  children  are  worn  out  too,  and  we're 
always  worrying,  I  know  it.  What  can  we  do? 
If  you  stay  here  you'll  know  that  this  is  the  land  of 
all  the  luxuries  and  none  of  the  necessities.  You'll 
know  and  then  you  won't  laugh.  You'll  know  why 
women  are  said  to  take  their  husbands  to  boarding- 
houses  and  never  have  homes.  You'll  know  what 
an  Irish  Catholic  means.  The  men  won't  get  up  and 
attend  to  these  things,  but  we  would.  If  we  had 
female  suffrage,  we'd  shut  the  door  to  all  the  Irish  and 
throw  it  open  to  all  the  Chinese,  and  let  the  women 
have  a  little  protection."  It  was  the  cry  of  a  soul 
worn  thin  with  exasperation,  but  it  was  truth. 
To-day  I  do  not  laugh  any  more  at  the  race  that 
depends  on  inefficient  helot  races  for  its  inefficient 
service.  When  next,  you,  housekeeping  in  England 
differ  with  the  respectable,  amiable,  industrious 
sixteen-pound  maid,  who  wears  a  cap  and  says 
"  Ma'am,"  remember  the  pauper  labour  of  America — 
the  wives  of  the  sixty  million  kings  who  have  no 


102       FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

subjects.  No  man  could  get  a  thorough  knowledge 
of  the  problem  in  one  lifetime,  but  he  could  guess  at 
the  size  and  the  import  of  it  after  he  has  descended 
into  the  arena  and  wrestled  with  the  Swede  and  the 
Dane  and  the  German  and  the  unspeakable  Celt. 
Then  he  perceives  how  good  for  the  breed  it  must  be 
that  a  man  should  thresh  himself  to  pieces  in  naked 
competition  with  his  neighbour  while  his  wife 
struggles  unceasingly  over  primitive  savagery  in  the 
kitchen.  In  India  sometimes  when  a  famine  is  at 
hand  the  life  of  the  land  starts  up  before  your  eyes  in 
all  its  bareness  and  bitter  stress.  Here,  in  spite  of 
the  trimmings  and  the  frillings,  it  refuses  to  be 
subdued  and  the  clamour  and  the  clatter  of  it  are 
loud  above  all  other  sounds — as  sometimes  the 
thunder  of  disorganized  engines  stops  conversations 
along  the  decks  of  a  liner,  and  in  the  inquiring  eyes 
of  the  passengers  you  read  the  question — "This 
thing  is  made  and  paid  to  bear  us  to  port  quietly. 
Why  does  it  not  do  so?"  Only  here  the  rattle  of  the 
badly-put-together  machine  is  always  in  the  ears, 
though  men  and  women  run  about  with  labour-saving 
appliances  and  gospels  of  "power  through  repose," 
tinkering  and  oiling  and  making  more  noise.  The 
machine  is  new.  Some  day  it  is  going  to  be  the 
finest  machine  in  the  world.  To  the  ranks  of  the 
amateur  artificers,  therefore,  are  added  men  with 
notebooks  tapping  at  every  nut  and  bolthead, 
fiddling  with  the  glands,  registering  revolutions,  and 


ON  ONE  SIDE  ONLY  103 

crying  out  from  time  to  time  that  this  or  that  is  or 
is  not  "  distinctively  American."  Meantime,  men  and 
women  die  unnecessarily  in  the  wheels,  and  they  are 
said  to  have  fallen  "in  the  battle  of  life." 

The  God  Who  sees  us  all  die  knows  that  there  is 
far  too  much  of  that  battle,  but  we  do  not,  and  so 
continue  worshipping  the  knife  that  cuts  and  the 
wheel  that  breaks  us,  as  blindly  as  the  outcast 
sweeper  worships  Lai-Beg  the  Glorified  Broom  that 
is  the  incarnation  of  his  craft.  But  the  sweeper  has 
sense  enough  not  to  kill  himself,  and  to  be  proud  of 
it,  with  sweeping. 

A  foreigner  can  do  little  good  by  talking  of  these 
things;  for  the  same  lean  dry  blood  that  breeds  the 
fever  of  unrest  breeds  also  the  savage  parochial 
pride  that  squeals  under  a  steady  stare  or  a  pointed 
finger.  Among  themselves  the  people  of  the  Eastern 
cities  admit  that  they  and  their  womenfolk  overwork 
grievously  and  go  to  pieces  very  readily,  and  that  the 
consequences  for  the  young  stock  are  unpleasant 
indeed;  but  before  the  stranger  they  prefer  to  talk 
about  the  future  of  their  mighty  continent  (which  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  case)  and  to  call  aloud  on 
Baal  of  the  Dollars — to  catalogue  their  lines,  mines, 
telephones,  banks,  and  cities,  and  all  the  other  shells, 
buttons,  and  counters  that  they  have  made  their 
gods  over  them.  Now  a  nation  does  not  progress 
upon  its  brain-pan,  as  some  books  would  have  us 
believe,  but  upon  its  belly  as  did  the  Serpent  of  old; 


io4       FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

and  in  the  very  long  run  the  work  of  the  brain  comes 
to  be  gathered  in  by  a  slow-footed  breed  that  have 
unimaginative  stomachs  and  the  nerves  that  know 
their  place. 

All  this  is  very  consoling  from  the  alien's  point 
of  view.  He  perceives,  with  great  comfort,  that  out 
of  strain  is  bred  impatience  in  the  shape  of  a  young 
bundle  of  nerves,  who  is  about  as  undisciplined  an 
imp  as  the  earth  can  show.  Out  of  impatience, 
grown  up,  habituated  to  violent  and  ugly  talk,  and 
the  impatience  and  recklessness  of  his  neighbours, 
is  begotten  lawlessness,  encouraged  by  laziness  and 
suppressed  by  violence  when  it  becomes  insupport- 
able. Out  of  lawlessness  is  bred  rebellion  (and  that 
fruit  has  been  tasted  once  already),  and  out  of  re- 
bellion comes  profit  to  those  who  wait.  He  hears 
of  the  power  of  the  People  who,  through  rank  sloven- 
liness, neglect  to  see  that  their  laws  are  soberly  en- 
forced from  the  beginning;  and  these  people,  not 
once  or  twice  in  a  year,  but  many  times  within  a 
month,  go  out  in  the  open  streets  and  with  a  maxi- 
mum waste  of  power  and  shouting  strangle  other 
people  with  ropes.  They  are,  he  is  told,  law-abid- 
ing citizens  who  have  executed  "the  will  of  the 
people";  which  is  as  though  a  man  should  leave  his 
papers  unsorted  for  a  year  and  then  smash  his  desk 
with  an  axe,  crying,  "Am  I  not  orderly?"  He  hears 
lawyers,  otherwise  sane  and  matured,  defend  this 
pig-jobbing  murder  on  the  grounds  that  "the  people 


ON  ONE  SIDE  ONLY  105 

stand   behind   the  law" — the  law  that  they  never 
administered.     He  sees  a  right,  at  present  only  half 
— but  still  half — conceded  to  anticipate  the  law  in 
one's  own  interests;  and  nervous  impatience  (always 
nerves)  forejudging  the  suspect  in  jail,  the  prisoner 
in  the  dock,  and  the  award  between  nation  and  nation 
ere  it  is  declared.     He  knows  that  the  maxim  in 
London,  Yokohoma,  and  Hongkong  in  doing  business 
with  the  pure-bred  American  is  to  keep  him  waiting, 
for  the  reason  that  forced  inaction  frets  the  man  to  a 
lather,   as  standing  in   harness  frets   a  half-broken 
horse.     He  comes  across  a  thousand  little  peculiari- 
ties  of  speech,   manner,    and   thought — matters   of 
nerve  and  stomach  developed  by  everlasting  friction 
— and  they  are  all  just  the  least  little  bit  in  the  world 
lawless,  no  more  than  the  restless  clicking  together 
of  horns  in  a  herd  of  restless  cattle,  but  certainly 
no  less.     They  are  all  good — good  for  those  who  wait. 
On  the  other  hand,  to  consider  the  matter  more 
humanly,    there    are    thousands   of   delightful    men 
and  women   going  to  pieces  for  the  pitiful  reason 
that  if  they  do  not  keep  up  with  the  procession, 
"they  are  left."     And  they  are  left — in  clothes  that 
have  no  back  to  them,  among  mounds  of  smilax. 
And   young   men — chance-met   in   the  streets,  talk 
to  you  about  their  nerves  which  are  things  no  young 
man  should  know  anything  about;  and  the  friends  of 
your  friends  go  down  with  nervous  prostration,  and 
the  people  overheard  in  the  trains  talk  about  their 


106      FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

nerves  and  the  nerves  of  their  relatives;  and  the 
little  children  must  needs  have  their  nerves  attended 
to  ere  their  milk  teeth  are  shed,  and  the  middle-aged 
women  and  the  middle-aged  men  have  got  them 
too,  and  the  old  men  lose  the  dignity  of  their  age 
in  an  indecent  restlessness,  and  the  advertisements 
in  the  papers  go  to  show  that  this  sweeping  list 
is  no  lie.  Atop  of  the  fret  and  the  stampede  the 
tingling  self-consciousness  of  a  new  people  makes 
them  take  a  sort  of  perverted  pride  in  the  futile 
racket  that  sends  up  the  death-rate — a  child's 
delight  in  the  blaze  and  the  dust  of  the  March 
of  Progress.  Is  it  not  "distinctively  American"? 
It  is,  and  it  is  not.  If  the  cities  were  all  America, 
as  they  pretend,  fifty  years  would  see  the  March 
of  Progress  brought  to  a  standstill,  as  a  locomotive 
is  stopped  by  heated  bearings.     .     .     . 

Down  in  the  meadow  the  mowing-machine  has 
checked,  and  the  horses  are  shaking  themselves. 
The  last  of  the  sunlight  leaves  the  top  of  Monadnock, 
and  four  miles  away  Main  Street  lights  her  electric 
lamps.  It  is  band-night  in  Main  Street,  and  the 
folks  from  Putney,  from  Marlboro',  from  Guildford, 
and  even  New  Fane  will  drive  in  their  well-filled 
waggons  to  hear  music  and  look  at  the  Ex-President. 
Over  the  shoulder  of  the  meadow  two  men  come  up 
very  slowly,  their  hats  off*  and  their  arms  swinging 
loosely  at  their  sides.  They  do  not  hurry,  they 
have  not  hurried,   and  they  never  will  hurry,   for 


ON  ONE  SIDE  ONLY  107 

they  are  of  country — bankers  of  the  flesh  and  blood 
of  the  ever  bankrupt  cities.  Their  children  may 
yet  be  pale  summer  boarders,  as  the  boarders,  city- 
bred  weeds,  may  take  over  their  farms.  From  the 
plough  to  the  pavement  goes  man,  but  to  the  plough 
he  returns  at  last. 
"Going  to  supper?" 

'  Ye-ep,"  very  slowly  across  the  wash  of  the  uncut 
grass. 

"Say,  that  corncrib  wants  painting." 
"Do  that  when  we  get  around  to  it." 
They  go  off  through  the  dusk,  without  farewell 
or  salutation  steadily  as  their  own  steers.     And  there 
are  a  few  millions  of  them — unhandy  men  to  cross 
in  their  ways,  set,  silent,  indirect  in  speech,  and  as 
impenetrable  as  that  other  Eastern  farmer  who  is 
the  bedrock  of  another  land.     They  do  not  appear 
in  the  city  papers,  they  are  not  much  heard  in  the 
streets,  and  they  tell  very  little  in  the  outsider's  esti- 
mate of  America. 
And  they  are  the  American. 


Leaves  from  a  Winter  Note-Book 

(1895) 

We  had  walked  abreast  of  the  year  from  the  very 
beginning,  and  that  was  when  the  first  blood-root 
came  up  between  the  patches  of  April  snow,  while 
yet  the  big  drift  at  the  bottom  of  the  meadow  held 
fast.  In  the  shadow  of  the  woods  and  under  the 
blown  pine-needles  clots  of  snow  lay  till  far  into  May, 
but  neither  the  season  nor  the  flowers  took  any  note 
of  them,  and,  before  we  were  well  sure  Winter  had 
gone,  the  lackeys  of  my  Lord  Baltimore  in  their  new 
liveries  came  to  tell  us  that  Summer  was  in  the  val- 
ley, and  please  might  they  nest  at  the  bottom  of  the 
garden? 

Followed,  Summer,  angry,  fidgety,  and  nervous, 
with  the  corn  and  tobacco  to  ripen  in  five  short 
months,  the  pastures  to  reclothe,  and  the  fallen  leaves 
to  hide  away  under  new  carpets.  Suddenly,  in  the 
middle  of  her  work,  on  a  stuffy-still  July  day,  she 
called  a  wind  out  of  the  Northwest,  a  wind  blown 
under  an  arch  of  steel-bellied  clouds,  a  wicked  bitter 
wind  with  a  lacing  of  hail  to  it,  a  wind  that  came 
and  was  gone  in  less  than  ten  minutes,  but  blocked 
the  roads  with  fallen  trees,  toppled  over  a  barn,  and 

108 


FROM  A  WINTER  NOTE-BOOK       109 

— blew  potatoes  out  of  the  ground!  When  that  was 
done,  a  white  cloud  shaped  like  a  dumb-bell  whirled 
down  the  valley  across  the  evening  blue,  roaring  and 
twisting  and  twisting  and  roaring  all  alone  by  itself. 
A  West  Indian  hurricane  could  not  have  been  quicker 
on  its  feet  than  our  little  cyclone,  and  when  the 
house  rose  a-tiptoe,  like  a  cockerel  in  act  to  crow, 
and  a  sixty-foot  elm  went  by  the  board,  and  that 
which  had  been  a  dusty  road  became  a  roaring  tor- 
rent all  in  three  minutes,  we  felt  that  the  New  Eng- 
land Summer  had  Creole  blood  in  her  veins.  She 
went  away,  red-faced  and  angry  to  the  last,  slamming 
all  the  doors  of  the  hills  behind  her,  and  Autumn,  who 
is  a  lady,  took  charge. 

No  pen  can  describe  the  turning  of  the  leaves — 
the  insurrection  of  the  tree-people  against  the  waning 
year.  A  little  maple  began  it,  flaming  blood-red 
of  a  sudden  where  he  stood  against  the  dark  green  of 
a  pine-belt.  Next  morning  there  was  an  answering 
signal  from  the  swamp  where  the  sumacs  grow. 
Three  days  later,  the  hill-sides  as  far  as  the  eye  could 
range  were  afire,  and  the  roads  paved,  with  crimson 
and  gold.  Then  a  wet  wind  blew,  and  ruined  all 
the  uniforms  of  that  gorgeous  host;  and  the  oaks, 
who  had  held  themselves  in  reserve,  buckled  on  their 
dull  and  bronzed  cuirasses  and  stood  it  out  stiffly 
to  the  last  blown  leaf,  till  nothing  remained  but 
pencil-shading  of  bare  boughs,  and  one  could  see  into 
the  most  private  heart  of  the  woods. 


no      FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

Frost  may  be  looked  for  till  the  middle  of  May 
and  after  the  middle  of  September,  so  Summer 
has  little  time  for  enamel-work  or  leaf-embroidery. 
Her  sisters  bring  the  gifts — Spring,  wind-flowers, 
Solomon's-Seal,  Dutchman's-breeches,  Quaker-ladies, 
and  trailing  arbutus,  that  smells  as  divinely  as  the 
true  May.  Autumn  has  goldenrod  and  all  the 
tribe  of  asters,  pink,  lilac,  and  creamy  white,  by  the 
double  armful.  When  these  go  the  curtain  comes 
down,  and  whatever  Powers  shift  the  scenery  behind, 
work  without  noise.  In  tropic  lands  you  can  hear 
the  play  of  growth  and  decay  at  the  back  of  the  night- 
silences.  Even  in  England  the  tides  of  the  winter  air 
have  a  set  and  a  purpose;  but  here  they  are  dumb 
altogether.  The  very  last  piece  of  benchwork  this 
season  was  the  trailed  end  of  a  blackberry-vine,  most 
daringly  conventionalized  in  hammered  iron,  flung 
down  on  the  frosty  grass  an  instant  before  people 
came  to  look.  The  blue  bloom  of  the  furnace  was 
still  dying  along  the  central  rib,  and  the  side  sprays 
were  cherry  red,  even  as  they  had  been  lifted  from  the 
charcoal.  It  was  a  detail,  evidently,  of  some  in- 
visible gate  in  the  woods;  but  we  never  found  that 
workman,  though  he  had  left  the  mark  of  his  cloven 
foot  as  plainly  as  any  strayed  deer.  In  a  week 
the  heavy  frosts  with  scythes  and  hammers  had 
slashed  and  knocked  down  all  the  road-side  growth 
and  the  kindly  bushes  that  veil  the  drop  off  the  un- 
fenced  track. 


FROM  A  WINTER  NOTE-BOOK       in 

There  the  seasons  stopped  awhile.  Autumn  was 
gone,  Winter  was  not.  We  had  Time  dealt  out  to 
us — more,  clear,  fresh  Time — grace-days  to  enjoy. 
The  white  wooden  farmhouses  were  banked  round 
two  feet  deep  with  dried  leaves  or  earth,  and  the 
choppers  went  out  to  get  ready  next  year's  stores 
of  wood.  Now,  chopping  is  an  art,  and  the  chopper 
in  all  respects  an  artist.  He  makes  his  own  axe- 
helve,  and  for  each  man  there  is  but  one  perfect  piece 
of  wood  in  all  the  world.  This  he  never  finds,  but 
the  likest  substitute  is  trimmed  and  balanced  and 
poised  to  that  ideal.  One  man  I  know  has  evolved 
very  nearly  the  weapon  of  Umslopogaas.  It  is 
almost  straight,  lapped  at  the  butt  with  leather, 
amazingly  springy,  and  carries  a  two-edged  blade 
for  splitting  and  chopping.  If  his  Demon  be  with 
him — and  what  artist  can  answer  for  all  his  moods? — 
he  will  cause  a  tree  to  fall  upon  any  stick  or  stone 
that  you  choose,  uphill  or  down,  to  the  right  or  to 
the  left.  Artist-like,  however,  he  explains  that  that 
is  nothing.  Any  fool  can  play  with  a  tree  in  the 
open,  but  it  needs  the  craftsman  to  bring  a  tree  down 
in  thick  timber  and  do  no  harm.  To  see  an  eighty- 
foot  maple,  four  feet  in  the  butt,  dropped,  deftly 
as  a  fly  is  cast,  in  the  only  place  where  it  will  not 
outrage  the  feelings  and  swipe  ofF  the  tops  of  fifty 
juniors,  is  a  revelation.  White  pine,  hemlock,  and 
spruce  share  this  country  with  maples,  black  and 
white   birches,   and   beech.     Maple   seems   to  have 


ii2       FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

few  preferences,  and  the  white  birches  straggle 
and  shiver  on  the  outskirts  of  every  camp;  but 
the  pines  hold  together  in  solid  regiments,  send- 
ing out  skirmishers  to  invade  a  neglected  past- 
ure on  the  first  opportunity.  There  is  no  over- 
coat warmer  than  the  pines  in  a  gale  when  the 
woods  for  miles  round  are  singing  like  cathedral 
organs,  and  the  first  snow  of  the  year  powders  the 
rock  ledges. 

The  mosses  and  lichens,  green,  sulphur,  and 
amber,  stud  the  copper  floor  of  needles,  where 
the  feathery  ground-pine  runs  aimlessly  to  and 
fro  along  the  ground,  spelling  out  broken  words 
of  half-forgotten  charms.  There  are  checker-berries 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  wood,  where  the  partridge 
(he  is  a  ruffed  grouse  really)  dines,  and  by  the  de- 
serted logging-roads  toadstools  of  all  colours  sprout 
on  the  decayed  stumps.  Wherever  a  green  or  blue 
rock  lifts  from  the  hillside,  the  needles  have  been 
packed  and  matted  round  its  base,  till,  when  the 
sunshine  catches  them,  stone  and  setting  together 
look  no  meaner  than  turquoise  in  dead  gold.  The 
woods  are  full  of  colour,  belts  and  blotches  of  it, 
the  colours  of  the  savage — red,  yellow,  and  blue. 
Yet  in  their  lodges  there  is  very  little  life,  for  the 
wood-people  do  not  readily  go  into  the  shadows. 
The  squirrels  have  their  business  among  the  beeches 
and  hickories  by  the  road-side,  where  they  can  watch 
the  traffic  and  talk.     We  have  no  gray  ones  here- 


FROM  A  WINTER  NOTE-BOOK       113 

abouts  (they  are  good  to  eat  and  suffer  for  it),  but 
five  reds  live  in  a  hickory  hard  by,  and  no  weather 
puts  them  to  sleep.  The  woodchuck,  a  marmot  and 
a  strategist,  makes  his  burrow  in  the  middle  of  a  field, 
where  he  must  see  you  ere  you  see  him.  Now  and 
again  a  dog  manages  to  cut  him  off  his  base,  and  the 
battle  is  worth  crossing  fields  to  watch.  But  the 
woodchuck  turned  in  long  ago,  and  will  not  be 
out  till  April.  The  coon  lives — well,  no  one  seems 
to  know  particularly  where  Brer  Coon  lives,  but 
when  the  Hunter's  Moon  is  large  and  full  he  descends 
into  the  corn-lands,  and  men  chase  him  with 
dogs  for  his  fur,  which  makes  the  finest  kind  of 
overcoat,  and  his  flesh,  which  tastes  like  chick- 
ens. He  cries  at  night  sorrowfully  as  though  a  child 
were  lost. 

They  seem  to  kill,  for  one  reason  or  other,  every- 
thing that  moves  in  this  land.  Hawks,  of  course; 
eagles  for  their  rarity;  foxes  for  their  pelts;  red- 
shouldered  blackbirds  and  Baltimore  orioles  because 
they  are  pretty,  and  the  other  small  things  for  sport — 
French  fashion.  You  can  get  a  rifle  of  a  kind  for 
twelve  shillings,  and  if  your  neighbour  be  fool  enough 
to  post  notices  forbidding  "hunting"  and  fishing, 
you  naturally  seek  his  woods.  So  the  country  is  very 
silent  and  unalive. 

There  are,  however,  bears  within  a  few  miles,  as 
you  will  see  from  this  notice,  picked  up  at  the  local 
tobacconist's: 


ii4      FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

JOHNNY  GET  YOUR  GUN!    BEAR  HUNT! 

As  bears  are  too  numerous  in  the  town  of  Peltyville  Corners, 
Vt.,  the  hunters  of  the  surrounding  towns  are  invited  to  partici- 
pate in  a  grand  hunt  to  be  held  on  Blue  Mountains  in  the  town 
of  Peltyville  Corners,  Vt.,  Wednesday,  Nov.  8th,  if  pleasant.  If 
not,  first  fine  day.     Come  one,  come  all! 

They  went,  but  it  was  the  bear  that  would  not 
participate.  The  notice  was  printed  at  somebody's 
Electric  Print  Establishment.  Queer  mixture,  isn't 
it? 

The  bear  does  not  run  large  as  a  rule,  but  he 
has  a  weakness  for  swine  and  calves  which  brings 
punishment.  Twelve  hours'  rail  and  a  little  march- 
ing take  you  up  to  the  moose-country;  and  twenty- 
odd  miles  from  here  as  the  crow  flies  you  come  to 
virgin  timber,  where  trappers  live,  and  where  there  is 
a  Lost  Pond  that  many  have  found  once  but  can 
never  find  again. 

Men,  who  are  of  one  blood  with  sheep,  have 
followed  their  friends  and  the  railway  along  the 
river  valleys  where  the  towns  are.  Across  the 
hills  the  inhabitants  are  few,  and,  outside  their 
State,  little  known.  They  withdraw  from  society 
in  November  if  they  live  on  the  uplands,  coming 
down  in  May  as  the  snow  gives  leave.  Not  much 
more  than  a  generation  ago  these  farms  made  their 
own  clothes,  soap,  and  candles,  and  killed  their  own 
meat  thrice  a  year,  beef,  veal,  and  pig,  and  sat  still 
between-times.     Now  they  buy  shop-made  clothes, 


FROM  A  WINTER  NOTE-BOOK       115 

patent  soaps,  and  kerosene;  and  it  is  among  their 
tents  that  the  huge  red  and  gilt  Biographies  of  Presi- 
dents, and  the  twenty-pound  family  Bible,  with  il- 
luminated marriage-registers,  mourning-cards,  bap- 
tismal certificates,  and  hundreds  of  genuine  steel- 
engravings  sell  best.  Here,  too,  off  the  main  trav- 
elled roads,  the  wandering  quack — Patent  Electric 
Pills,  nerve  cures,  etc. — divides  the  field  with  the 
seed  and  fruit  man  and  the  seller  of  cattle-boluses. 
They  dose  themselves  a  good  deal,  I  fancy,  for  it  is  a 
poor  family  that  does  not  know  all  about  nervous- 
prostration.  So  the  quack  drives  a  pair  of  horses 
and  a  gaily  painted  waggon  with  a  hood,  and  some- 
times takes  his  wife  with  him.  Once  only  have  I  met 
a  pedlar  afoot.  He  was  an  old  man,  shaken  with 
palsy,  and  he  pushed  a  thing  exactly  like  a  pauper's 
burial-cart,  selling  pins,  tape,  scents,  and  flavourings. 
You  helped  yourself,  for  his  hands  had  no  direction, 
and  he  told  a  long  tale  in  which  the  deeding  away  of  a 
farm  to  one  of  his  family  was  mixed  up  with  pride 
at  the  distances  he  still  could  cover  daily.  As  much 
as  six  miles  sometimes.  He  was  no  Lear,  as  the  gift 
of  the  farm  might  suggest,  but  sealed  of  the  tribe  of 
the  Wandering  Jew — a  tremulous  old  giddy-gaddy. 
There  are  many  such  rovers,  gelders  of  colts  and  the 
like,  who  work  a  long  beat,  south  to  Virginia  almost, 
and  north  to  the  frontier,  paying  with  talk  and  gossip 
for  their  entertainment. 

Yet  tramps  are  few,  and  that  is  well,  for  the  Ameri- 


n6      FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

can  article  answers  almost  exactly  to  the  vagrant 
and  criminal  tribes  of  India,  being  a  predatory  ruffian 
who  knows  too  much  to  work.  Bad  place  to  beg  in 
after  dark — on  a  farm — very — is  Vermont.  Gypsies 
pitch  their  camp  by  the  river  in  the  spring,  and  cooper 
horses  in  the  manner  of  their  tribe.  They  have  the 
gypsy  look  and  some  of  the  old  gypsy  names,  but 
say  that  they  are  largely  mixed  with  Gentile  blood. 

Winter  has  chased  all  these  really  interesting 
people  south,  and  in  a  few  weeks,  if  we  have  anything 
of  a  snow,  the  back  farms  will  be  unvisited  save  by 
the  doctor's  hooded  sleigh.  It  is  no  child's  play  to 
hold  a  practice  here  through  the  winter  months,  when 
the  drifts  are  really  formed,  and  a  pair  can  drop  in 
up  to  their  saddle-pads.  Four  horses  a  day  some  of 
them  use,  and  use  up — for  they  are  good  men. 

Now  in  the  big  silence  of  the  snow  is  born,  per- 
haps, not  a  little  of  New  England  conscience  which 
her  children  write  about.  There  is  much  time  to 
think,  and  thinking  is  a  highly  dangerous  business. 
Conscience,  fear,  undigested  reading,  and,  it  may 
be,  not  too  well  cooked  food,  have  full  swing.  A 
man,  and  more  particularly  a  woman,  can  easily  hear 
strange  voices — the  Word  of  the  Lord  rolling  between 
the  dead  hills;  may  see  visions  and  dream  dreams;  get 
revelations  and  an  outpouring  of  the  spirit,  and 
end  (such  things  have  been)  lamentably  enough 
in  those  big  houses  by  the  Connecticut  River  which 
have  been  tenderly  christened  The  Retreat.     Hate 


FROM  A  WINTER  NOTE-BOOK       117 

breeds  as  well  as  religion — the  deep,  instriking  hate 
between  neighbours,  that  is  born  of  a  hundred  little 
things  added  up,  brooded  over,  and  hatched  by  the 
stove  when  two  or  three  talk  together  in  the  long 
evenings.  It  would  be  very  interesting  to  get  the 
statistics  of  revivals  and  murders,  and  find  how 
many  of  them  have  been  committed  in  the  spring. 
But  for  undistracted  people  winter  is  one  long  delight 
of  the  eye.  In  other  lands  one  knows  the  snow  as  a 
nuisance  that  comes  and  goes,  and  is  sorely  man- 
handled and  messed  at  the  last.  Here  it  lies  longer 
on  the  ground  than  any  crop — from  November  to 
April  sometimes — and  for  three  months  life  goes  to 
the  tune  of  sleigh-bells,  which  are  not,  as  a  Southern 
visitor  once  hinted,  ostentation,  but  safeguards. 
The  man  who  drives  without  them  is  not  loved. 
The  snow  is  a  faithful  barometer,  foretelling  good 
sleighing  or  stark  confinement  to  barracks.  It  is 
all  the  manure  the  stony  pastures  receive;  it  cloaks 
the  ground  and  prevents  the  frost  bursting  pipes; 
it  is  the  best — I  had  almost  written  the  only — road- 
maker  in  the  States.  On  the  other  side  it  can  rise 
up  in  the  night  and  bid  the  people  sit  still  as  the 
Egyptians.  It  can  stop  mails;  wipe  out  all  time- 
tables; extinguish  the  lamps  of  twenty  towns,  and 
kill  man  within  sight  of  his  own  door-step  or  hearing 
of  his  cattle  unfed.  No  one  who  has  been  through 
even  so  modified  a  blizzard  as  New  England  can  pro- 
duce talks  lightly  of  the  snow.     Imagine  eight-and- 


u8      FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

forty  hours  of  roaring  wind,  the  thermometer  well 
down  towards  zero,  scooping  and  gouging  across  a 
hundred  miles  of  newly  fallen  snow.  The  air  is 
full  of  stinging  shot,  and  at  ten  yards  the  trees  are 
invisible.  The  foot  slides  on  a  reef,  polished  and 
black  as  obsidian,  where  the  wind  has  skinned  an  ex- 
posed corner  of  road  down  to  the  dirt  ice  of  early 
winter.  The  next  step  ends  hip-deep  and  over,  for 
here  an  unseen  wall  is  banking  back  the  rush  of  the 
singing  drifts.  A  scarped  slope  rises  sheer  across 
the  road.  The  wind  shifts  a  point  or  two,  and  all 
sinks  down,  like  sand  in  the  hour-glass,  leaving  a  pot- 
hole of  whirling  whiteness.  There  is  a  lull,  and  you 
can  see  the  surface  of  the  fields  settling  furiously 
in  one  direction — a  tide  that  spurts  from  between 
the  tree-boles.  The  hollows  of  the  pasture  fill 
while  you  watch;  empty,  fill,  and  discharge  anew. 
The  rock-ledges  show  the  bare  flank  of  a  storm- 
chased  liner  for  a  moment,  and  whitening,  duck 
under.  Irresponsible  snow-devils  dance  by  the  lee 
of  a  barn  where  three  gusts  meet,  or  stagger  out  into 
the  open  till  they  are  cut  down  by  the  main  wind. 
At  the  worst  of  the  storm  there  is  neither  Heaven 
nor  Earth,  but  only  a  swizzle  into  which  a  man  may 
be  brewed.  Distances  grow  to  nightmare  scale, 
and  that  which  in  the  summer  was  no  more  than 
a  minute's  bare-headed  run,  is  half  an  hour's  gasping 
struggle,  each  foot  won  between  the  lulls.  Then  do 
the  heavy-timbered  barns  talk  like  ships  in  a  cross- 


FROM  A  WINTER  NOTE-BOOK       119 

sea,  beam  working  against  beam.  The  winter's 
hay  is  ribbed  over  with  long  lines  of  snow  dust  blown 
between  the  boards,  and  far  below  in  the  byre  the 
oxen  clash  their  horns  and  moan  uneasily. 

The  next  day  is  blue,  breathless,  and  most  utterly 
still.  The  farmers  shovel  a  way  to  their  beasts, 
bind  with  chains  their  large  ploughshares  to  their 
heaviest  wood-sled  and  take  of  oxen  as  many  as 
Allah  has  given  them.  These  they  drive,  and  the 
dragging  share  makes  a  furrow  in  which  a  horse 
can  walk,  and  the  oxen,  by  force  of  repeatedly  going 
in  up  to  their  bellies,  presently  find  foothold.  The 
finished  road  is  a  deep  double  gutter  between  three- 
foot  walls  of  snow,  where,  by  custom,  the  heavier 
vehicle  has  the  right  of  way.  The  lighter  man  when 
he  turns  out  must  drop  waist-deep  and  haul  his 
unwilling  beast  into  the  drift,  leaving  Providence  to 
steady  the  sleigh. 

In  the  towns,  where  they  choke  and  sputter 
and  gasp,  the  big  snow  turns  to  horsepondine. 
With  us  it  stays  still;  the  wind,  sun  and  rain  get 
to  work  upon  it,  lest  the  texture  and  colour  should 
not  change  daily.  Rain  makes  a  granulated  crust 
over  all,  in  which  white  shagreen  the  trees  are  faintly 
reflected.  Heavy  mists  go  up  and  down,  and  create 
a  sort  of  mirage,  till  they  settle  and  pack  round  the 
iron-tipped  hills,  and  then  you  know  how  the  moon 
must  look  to  an  inhabitant  of  it.  At  twilight,  again, 
the  beaten-down  ridges  and  laps  and  folds  of  the  up- 


120      FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

lands  take  on  the  likeness  of  wet  sand — some  huge 
and  melancholy  beach  at  the  world's  end — and  when 
day  meets  night  it  is  all  goblin  country.  To  west- 
ward, the  last  of  the  spent  day — rust-red  and  pearl, 
illimitable  levels  of  shore  waiting  for  the  tide  to  turn 
again.  To  eastward,  black  night  among  the  valleys, 
and  on  the  rounded  hill  in  slopes  a  hard  glare  that  is 
not  so  much  light  as  snail-slime  from  the  moon. 
Once  or  twice  perhaps  in  the  winter  the  Northern 
Lights  come  out  between  the  moon  and  the  sun,  so 
that  to  the  two  unearthy  lights  is  added  the  leap 
and  flare  of  the  Aurora  Borealis. 

In  January  or  February  come  the  great  ice- 
storms,  when  every  branch,  blade,  and  trunk  is 
coated  with  frozen  rain,  so  that  you  can  touch  noth- 
ing truly.  The  spikes  of  the  pines  are  sunk  into 
pear-shaped  crystals,  and  each  fence-post  is  miracu- 
lously hiked  with  diamonds.  If  you  bend  a  twig, 
the  icing  cracks  like  varnish,  and  a  half-inch  branch 
snaps  off  at  the  lightest  tap.  If  wind  and  sun  open 
the  day  together,  the  eye  cannot  look  steadily  at 
the  splendour  of  this  jewellery.  The  woods  are  full 
of  the  clatter  of  arms;  the  ringing  of  bucks'  horns 
in  flight;  the  stampede  of  mailed  feet  up  and  down 
the  glades;  and  a  great  dust  of  battle  is  puffed  out 
into  the  open,  till  the  last  of  the  ice  is  beaten  away 
and  the  cleared  branches  take  up  their  regular  chant. 

Again  the  mercury  drops  twenty  and  more  below 
zero,  and  the  very  trees  swoon.     The  snow  turns  to 


FROM  A  WINTER  NOTE-BOOK       121 

French  chalk,  squeaking  under  the  heel,  and  their 
breath  cloaks  the  oxen  in  rime.  At  night  a  tree's 
heart  will  break  in  him  with  a  groan.  According  to 
the  books,  the  frost  has  split  something,  but  it  is  a 
fearful  sound,  this  grunt  as  of  a  man  stunned. 

Winter  that  is  winter  in  earnest  does  not  allow 
cattle  and  horses  to  play  about  the  fields,  so  every- 
thing comes  home;  and  since  no  share  can  break 
ground  to  any  profit  for  some  five  months,  there 
would  seem  to  be  very  little  to  do.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  country  interests  at  all  seasons  are  extensive 
and  peculiar,  and  the  day  is  not  long  enough  for  them 
when  you  take  out  that  time  which  a  self-respecting 
man  needs  to  turn  himself  round  in.  Consider! 
The  solid  undisturbed  hours  stand  about  one  like 
ramparts.  At  a  certain  time  the  sun  will  rise.  At 
another  hour,  equally  certain,  he  will  set.  This 
much  we  know.  Why,  in  the  name  of  Reason,  there- 
fore, should  we  vex  ourselves  with  vain  exertions? 
An  occasional  visitor  from  the  Cities  of  the  Plains 
comes  up  panting  to  do  things.  He  is  set  down  to 
listen  to  the  normal  beat  of  his  own  heart — a  sound 
that  very  few  men  have  heard.  In  a  few  days,  when 
the  lather  of  impatience  has  dried  off,  he  ceases  to 
talk  of  "getting  there  "  or  "  being  left."  He  does  not 
desire  to  accomplish  matters  "right  away,"  nor  does 
he  look  at  his  watch  from  force  of  habit,  but  keeps  it 
where  it  should  be — in  his  stomach.  At  the  last  he 
goes  back  to  his  beleaguered  city,  unwillingly,  par- 


122      FROM  TIDEWAY  TO  TIDEWAY 

tially  civilised,  soon  to  be  resavaged  by  the  clash 
of  a  thousand  wars  whose  echo  does  not  reach  here. 

The  air  which  kills  germs  dries  out  the  very  news- 
papers. They  might  be  of  to-morrow  or  a  hundred 
years  ago.  They  have  nothing  to  do  with  to-day — 
the  long,  full,  sunlit  to-day.  Our  interests  are  not 
on  the  same  scale  as  theirs,  perhaps,  but  much  more 
complex.  The  movement  of  a  foreign  power,  an 
alien  sleigh  on  this  Pontic  shore  must  be  explained 
and  accounted  for,  or  this  public's  heart  will  burst 
with  unsatisfied  curiosity.  If  it  be  Buck  Davis,  with 
the  white  mare  that  he  traded  his  colt  for,  and 
the  practically  new  sleigh-robe  that  he  bought  at 
Sewell  auction,  why  does  Buck  Davis,  who  lives  on 
the  river  flats,  cross  our  hills,  unless  Murder  Hollow 
be  blockaded  with  snow,  or  unless  he  has  turkeys  for 
sale?  But  Buck  Davis  with  turkeys  would  surely 
have  stopped  here,  unless  he  were  selling  a  large  stock 
in  town.  A  wail  from  the  sacking  at  the  back  of  the 
sleigh  tells  the  tale.  It  is  a  winter  calf,  and  Buck 
Davis  is  going  to  sell  it  for  one  dollar  to  the  Boston 
Market  where  it  will  be  turned  into  potted  chicken. 
This  leaves  the  mystery  of  his  change  of  route  unex- 
plained. After  two  days'  sitting  on  tenter-hooks 
it  is  discovered,  obliquely,  that  Buck  went  to  pay  a 
door-yard  call  on  Orson  Butler,  who  lives  on  the 
saeter  where  the  wind  and  the  bald  granite  scaurs 
fight  it  out  together.  Kirk  Demming  has  brought 
Orson  news  of  a  fox  at  the  back  of  Black  Mountain, 


FROM  A  WINTER  NOTE-BOOK       123 

and  Orson's  eldest  son,  going  to  Murder  Hollow  with 
wood  for  the  new  barn  floor  that  the  widow  Amidon 
is  laying  down,  told  Buck  that  he  might  as  well 
come  round  to  talk  to  his  father  about  the  pig. 
But  old  man  Butler  meant  fox-hunting  from  the 
first,  and  what  he  wanted  to  do  was  to  borrow  Buck's 
dog,  who  had  been  duly  brought  over  with  the  calf, 
and  left  on  the  mountain  No  old  man  Butler  did 
not  go  hunting  alone,  but  waited  till  Buck  came  back 
from  town.  Buck  sold  the  calf  for  a  dollar  and  a 
quarter  and  not  for  seventy-five  cents  as  was  falsely 
asserted  by  interested  parties.  Then  the  two  went 
after  the  fox  together.  This  much  learned,  every- 
body breathes  freely,  if  life  has  not  been  compli- 
cated in  the  meantime  by  more  strange  counter- 
marchings. 

Five  or  six  sleighs  a  day  we  can  understand,  if  we 
know  why  they  are  abroad;  but  a  metropolitan  rush 
of  traffic  disturbs  and  excites. 


LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

1908 

These  letters  appeared  in  newspapers  during  the 
spring  of  1908  after  a  trip  to  Canada  undertaken  in 
the  autumn  of  1907.  They  are  now  reprinted  with- 
out alteration. 

The  Road  to  Quebec. 
A  People  at  Home. 
Cities  and  Spaces. 
Newspapers  and  Democracy. 
Labour. 

Fortunate  Towns. 
Mountains  and  the  Pacific. 
A  Conclusion. 


The  Road  to  Quebec 

(1907) 

It  must  be  hard  for  those  who  do  not  live  there 
to  realize  the  cross  between  canker  and  blight  that 
has  settled  on  England  for  the  last  couple  of  years. 
The  effects  of  it  are  felt  throughout  the  Empire, 
but  at  headquarters  we  taste  the  stuff  in  the  very 
air,  just  as  one  tastes  iodoform  in  the  cups  and  bread- 
and-butter  of  a  hospital-tea.  So  far  as  one  can  come 
at  things  in  the  present  fog,  every  form  of  unfitness, 
general  or  specialized,  born  or  created,  during  the 
last  generation  has  combined  in  one  big  trust — a 
majority  of  all  the  minorities — to  play  the  game  of 
Government.  Now  that  the  game  ceases  to  amuse, 
nine-tenths  of  the  English  who  set  these  folk  in  power 
are  crying,  "If  we  had  only  known  what  they  were 
going  to  do  we  should  never  have  voted  for  them!" 
Yet,  as  the  rest  of  the  Empire  perceived  at  the 
time,  these  men  were  always  perfectly  explicit  as  to 
their  emotions  and  intentions.  They  said  first, 
and  drove  it  home  by  large  pictures,  that  no  possible 
advantage  to  the  Empire  outweighed  the  cruelty  and 
injustice  of  charging  the  British  working  man  two- 
pence halfpenny  a  week  on  some  of  his  provisions. 
Incidentally  they  explained,  so  that  all  Earth  except 

127 


128  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

England  heard  it,  that  the  Army  was  wicked;  much 
of  the  Navy  unnecessary;  that  half  the  population 
of  one  of  the  Colonies  practised  slavery,  with  torture, 
for  the  sake  of  private  gain,  and  that  the  mere  name 
of  Empire  wearied  and  sickened  them.  On  these 
grounds  they  stood  to  save  England;  on  these 
grounds  they  were  elected,  with  what  seemed  like 
clear  orders  to  destroy  the  blood-stained  fetish 
of  Empire  as  soon  as  possible.  The  present  mellow 
condition  of  Ireland,  Egypt,  India,  and  South  Africa 
is  proof  of  their  honesty  and  obedience.  Over  and 
above  this,  their  mere  presence  in  office  produced 
all  along  our  lines  the  same  moral  effect  as  the  pres- 
ence of  an  incompetent  master  in  a  classroom.  Paper 
pellets,  books,  and  ink  began  to  fly;  desks  were 
thumped;  dirty  pens  were  jabbed  into  those  trying 
to  work;  rats  and  mice  were  set  free  amid  squeals  of 
exaggerated  fear;  and,  as  usual,  the  least  desirable 
characters  in  the  forms  were  loudest  to  profess  noble 
sentiments,  and  most  eloquent  grief  at  being  mis- 
judged. Still,  the  English  are  not  happy,  and  the 
unrest  and  slackness  increase. 

On  the  other  hand,  which  is  to  our  advantage, 
the  isolation  of  the  unfit  in  one  political  party  has 
thrown  up  the  extremists  in  what  the  Babu  called 
"all  their  naked  cui  bono."  These  last  are  after 
satisfying  the  two  chief  desires  of  primitive  man 
by  the  very  latest  gadgets  in  scientific  legislation. 
But  how  to  get  free  food,  and  free — shall  we  say 


THE  ROAD  TO  QUEBEC  129 

— love  ?  within  the  four  corners  of  an  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment without  giving  the  game  away  too  grossly, 
worries  them  a  little.  It  is  easy  enough  to  laugh  at 
this,  but  we  are  all  so  knit  together  nowadays  that  a 
rot  at  what  is  called  "headquarters"  may  spread 
like  bubonic,  with  every  steamer.  I  went  across  to 
Canada  the  other  day,  for  a  few  weeks,  mainly  to 
escape  the  Blight,  and  also  to  see  what  our  Eldest 
Sister  was  doing.  Have  you  ever  noticed  that  Can- 
ada has  to  deal  in  the  lump  with  most  of  the  problems 
that  afflict  us  others  severally?  For  example,  she 
has  the  Double-Language,  Double-Law,  Double- 
Politics  drawback  in  a  worse  form  than  South  Africa, 
because,  unlike  our  Dutch,  her  French  cannot  well 
marry  outside  their  religion,  and  they  take  their 
orders  from  Italy — less  central,  sometimes,  than  Pre- 
toria or  Stellenbosch.  She  has  too,  something  of 
Australia's  labour  fuss,  minus  Australia's  isolation, 
but  plus  the  open  and  secret  influence  of  "Labour," 
entrenched,  with  arms,  and  high  explosives  on  neigh- 
bouring soil.  To  complete  the  parallel,  she  keeps, 
tucked  away  behind  mountains,  a  trifle  of  land  called 
British  Columbia,  which  resembles  New  Zealand; 
and  New  Zealanders  who  do  not  find  much  scope  for 
young  enterprise  in  their  own  country  are  drifting 
up  to  British  Columbia  already. 

Canada  has  in  her  time  known  calamity  more 
serious  than  floods,  frost,  drought,  and  fire — and 
has  macadamized  some  stretches  of  her  road  towards 


i3o  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

nationhood  with  the  broken  hearts  of  two  genera- 
tions. That  is  why  one  can  discuss  with  Canadians 
of  the  old  stock  matters  which  an  Australian  or  New 
Zealander  could  no  more  understand  than  a  healthy 
child  understands  death.  Truly  we  are  an  odd 
Family!  Australia  and  New  Zealand  (the  Maori 
War  not  counted)  got  everything  for  nothing. 
South  Africa  gave  everything  and  got  less  than  noth- 
ing. Canada  has  given  and  taken  all  along  the  line 
for  nigh  on  three  hundred  years,  and  in  some  re- 
spects is  the  wisest,  as  she  should  be  the  happiest,  of 
us  all.  She  seems  to  be  curiously  unconscious  of  her 
position  in  the  Empire,  perhaps  because  she  has 
lately  been  talked  at,  or  down  to,  by  her  neighbours. 
You  know  how  at  any  gathering  of  our  men  from  all 
quarters  it  is  tacitly  conceded  that  Canada  takes 
the  lead  in  the  Imperial  game.  To  put  it  roughly, 
she  saw  the  goal  more  than  ten  years  ago,  and  has 
been  working  the  ball  towards  it  ever  since.  That 
is  why  her  inaction  at  the  last  Imperial  Conference 
made  people  who  were  interested  in  the  play  wonder 
why  she,  of  all  of  us,  chose  to  brigade  herself  with 
General  Botha  and  to  block  the  forward  rush.  I, 
too,  asked  that  question  of  many.  The  answer  was 
something  like  this:  "We  saw  that  England  wasn't 
taking  anything  just  then.  Why  should  we  have 
laid  ourselves  open  to  be  snubbed  worse  than  we 
were?  We  sat  still."  Quite  reasonable — almost 
too  convincing.     There  was  really  no  need  that  Can- 


THE  ROAD  TO  QUEBEC  131 

ada  should  have  done  other  than  she  did — except 
that  she  was  the  Eldest  Sister,  and  more  was  ex- 
pected of  her.     She  is  a  little  too  modest. 

We  discussed  this,  first  of  all,  under  the  lee  of  a 
wet  deck-house  in  mid-Atlantic;  man  after  man  cut- 
ting in  and  out  of  the  talk  as  he  sucked  at  his  damp 
tobacco.  The  passengers  were  nearly  all  unmixed 
Canadian,  mostly  born  in  the  Maritime  Provinces, 
where  their  fathers  speak  of  "Canada"  as  Sussex 
speaks  of  "England,"  but  scattered  about  their 
businesses  throughout  the  wide  Dominion.  They 
were  at  ease,  too,  among  themselves,  with  that  pleas- 
ant intimacy  that  stamps  every  branch  of  Our  Family 
and  every  boat  that  it  uses  on  its  homeward  way. 
A  Cape  liner  is  all  the  sub-Continent  from  the  Equa- 
tor to  Simon's  Town;  an  Orient  boat  is  Australasian 
throughout,  and  a  C.P.R.  steamer  cannot  be  con- 
fused with  anything  except  Canada.  It  is  a  pity 
one  may  not  be  born  in  four  places  at  once,  and  then 
one  would  understand  the  half-tones  and  asides,  and 
the  allusions  of  all  our  Family  life  without  waste  of 
precious  time.  These  big  men,  smoking  in  the  driz- 
zle, had  hope  in  their  eyes,  belief  in  their  tongues,  and 
strength  in  their  hearts.  I  used  to  think  miserably 
of  other  boats  at  the  South  end  of  this  ocean — a 
quarter  full  of  people  deprived  of  these  things.  A 
young  man  kindly  explained  to  me  how  Canada  had 
suffered  through  what  he  called  "the  Imperial 
connection";  how  she  had  been  diversely  bedevilled 


132  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

by  English  statesmen  for  political  reasons.  He  did 
not  know  his  luck,  nor  would  he  believe  me  when  I 
tried  to  point  it  out;  but  a  nice  man  in  a  plaid  (who 
knew  South  Africa)  lurched  round  the  corner  and 
fell  on  him  with  facts  and  imagery  which  astonished 
the  patriotic  young  mind.  The  plaid  finished  his 
outburst  with  the  uncontradicted  statement  that  the 
English  were  mad.  All  our  talks  ended  on  that  note. 
It  was  an  experience  to  move  in  the  midst  of  a 
new  contempt.  One  understands  and  accepts  the 
bitter  scorn  of  the  Dutch,  the  hopeless  anger  of 
one's  own  race  in  South  Africa  is  also  part  of  the 
burden;  but  the  Canadian's  profound,  sometimes 
humorous,  often  bewildered,  always  polite  contempt 
of  the  England  of  to-day  cuts  a  little.  You  see,  that 
late  unfashionable  war1  was  very  real  to  Canada. 
She  sent  several  men  to  it,  and  a  thinly-populated 
country  is  apt  to  miss  her  dead  more  than  a  crowded 
one.  When,  from  her  point  of  view,  they  have  died 
for  no  conceivable  advantage,  moral  or  material, 
her  business  instincts,  or  it  may  be  mere  animal  love 
of  her  children,  cause  her  to  remember  and  resent 
quite  a  long  time  after  the  thing  should  be  decently 
forgotten.  I  was  shocked  at  the  vehemence  with 
which  some  men  (and  women)  spoke  of  the  affair. 
Some  of  them  went  so  far  as  to  discuss — on  the  ship 
and  elsewhere — whether  England  would  stay  in  the 
Family  or  whether,  as  some  eminent  statesman  was 

1  Boer  "war"  of  1899-1902. 


THE  ROAD  TO  QUEBEC  133 

said  to  have  asserted  in  private  talk,  she  would  cut 
the  painter  to  save  expense.  One  man  argued,  with- 
out any  heat,  that  she  would  not  so  much  break  out 
of  the  Empire  in  one  flurry,  as  politically  vend  her 
children  one  by  one  to  the  nearest  Power  that  threat- 
ened her  comfort,  the  sale  of  each  case  to  be  preceded 
by  a  steady  blast  of  abuse  of  the  chosen  victim. 
He  quoted — really  these  people  have  viciously 
long  memories! — the  five-year  campaign  of  abuse 
against  South  Africa  as  a  precedent  and  a  warning. 

Our  Tobacco  Parliament  next  set  itself  to  con- 
sider by  what  means,  if  this  happened,  Canada  could 
keep  her  identity  unsubmerged;  and  that  led  to  one 
of  the  most  curious  talks  I  have  ever  heard.  It 
seemed  to  be  decided  that  she  might — just  might — 
pull  through  by  the  skin  of  her  teeth  as  a  nation — 
if  (but  this  was  doubtful)  England  did  not  help  others 
to  hammer  her.  Now,  twenty  years  ago  one  would 
not  have  heard  any  of  this  sort  of  thing.  If  it 
sounds  a  little  mad,  remember  that  the  Mother 
Country  was  throughout  considered  as  a  lady  in  vio- 
lent hysterics. 

Just  at  the  end  of  the  talk  one  of  our  twelve  or 
thirteen  hundred  steerage-passengers  leaped  over- 
board, ulstered  and  booted,  into  a  confused  and  bit- 
ter cold  sea.  Every  horror  in  the  world  has  its 
fitting  ritual.  For  the  fifth  time — and  four  times 
in  just  such  weather — I  heard  the  screw  stop;  saw 
our  wake  curve  like  a  whiplash  as  the  great  town- 


134  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

ship  wrenched  herself  round;  the  lifeboat's  crew 
hurry  to  the  boat-deck;  the  bare-headed  officer  race 
up  the  shrouds  and  look  for  any  sign  of  the  poor  head 
that  had  valued  itself  so  lightly.  A  boat  amid  waves 
can  see  nothing.  There  was  nothing  to  see  from  the 
first.  We  waited  and  quartered  the  ground  back 
and  forth  for  a  long  hour,  while  the  rain  fell  and 
the  seas  slapped  along  our  sides,  and  the  steam  flut- 
tered drearily  through  the  escapes.  Then  we  went 
ahead. 

The  St.  Lawrence  on  the  last  day  of  the  voyage 
played  up  nobly.  The  maples  along  its  banks  had 
turned — blood  red  and  splendid  as  the  banners  of 
lost  youth.  Even  the  oak  is  not  more  of  a  national 
tree  than  the  maple,  and  the  sight  of  its  welcome 
made  the  folks  aboard  still  more  happy.  A  dry  wind 
brought  along  all  the  clean  smell  of  their  Continent- 
mixed  odours  of  sawn  umber,  virgin  earth,  and  wood- 
smoke;  and  they  snuffed  it,  and  their  eyes  softened  as 
they  identified  point  after  point  along  their  own 
beloved  river — places  where  they  played  and  fished 
and  amused  themselves  in  holiday  time.  It  must  be 
pleasant  to  have  a  country  of  ones  very  own  to  show 
off".  Understand,  they  did  not  in  any  way  boast, 
shout,  squeak,  or  exclaim,  these  even-voiced  returned 
men  and  women.  They  were  simply  and  unfeignedly 
glad  to  see  home  again,  and  they  said:  "Isn't  it 
lovely?     Don't  you  think  it's  beautiful?     We  love 


it." 


THE  ROAD  TO  QUEBEC  135 

At  Quebec  there  is  a  sort  of  place,  much  infested 
by  locomotives,  like  a  coal-chute  whence  rise  the 
heights  that  Wolfe's  men  scaled  on  their  way  to  the 
Plains  of  Abraham.  Perhaps  of  all  the  tide-marks 
in  all  our  lands  the  affair  of  Quebec  touches  the  heart 
and  the  eye  more  nearly  than  any  other.  Every- 
thing meets  there;  France,  the  jealous  partner  of 
England's  glory  by  land  and  sea  for  eight  hundred 
years;  England,  bewildered  as  usual,  but  for  a  won- 
der not  openly  opposing  Pitt,  who  knew;  those  other 
people,  destined  to  break  from  England  as  soon  as  the 
French  peril  was  removed;  Montcalm  himself, 
doomed  and  resolute;  Wolfe,  the  inevitable  trained 
workman  appointed  for  the  finish;  and  somewhere  in 
the  background  one  James  Cook,  master  of  H.  M.  S. 
Mercury,  making  beaut'ful  and  delicate  charts  of  the 
St.  Lawrence  River. 

For  these  reasons  the  Plains  of  Abraham  are 
crowned  with  all  sorts  of  beautiful  things — including 
a  jail  and  a  factory.  Montcalm's  left  wing  is  marked 
by  the  jail,  and  Wolfe's  right  by  the  factory.  There 
is,  happily,  now  a  movement  on  foot  to  abolish  these 
adornments  and  turn  the  battle-field  and  its  sur- 
roundings into  a  park,  which  by  nature  and  asso- 
ciation would  be  one  of  the  most  beautiful  in  our 
world. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  jails  on  the  one  side  and  convents 
on  the  other  and  the  thin  black  wreck  of  the  Quebec 
Railway  Bridge,  lying  like  a  dumped  car-load  of  tin 


1 36  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

cans  in  the  river,  the  Eastern  Gate  to  Canada  is  noble 
with  a  dignity  beyond  words.  We  saw  it  very  early, 
when  the  under  sides  of  the  clouds  turned  chilly  pink 
over  a  high-piled,  brooding,  dusky-purple  city.  Just 
at  the  point  of  dawn,  what  looked  like  the  Sultan 
Harun-al-Raschid's  own  private  shallop,  all  spangled 
with  coloured  lights,  stole  across  the  iron-gray  water, 
and  disappeared  into  the  darkness  of  a  slip.  She 
came  out  again  in  three  minutes,  but  the  full  day 
had  come  too;  so  she  snapped  off  her  masthead,  steer- 
ing and  cabin  electrics,  and  turned  into  a  dingy 
white  ferry-boat,  full  of  cold  passengers.  I  spoke  to  a 
Canadian  about  her.  "Why,  she's  the  old  So-and- 
So,  to  Port  Levis,"  he  answered,  wondering  as  the 
Cockney  wonders  when  a  stranger  stares  at  an 
Inner  Circle  train.  This  was  his  Inner  Circle — the 
Zion  where  he  was  all  at  ease.  He  drew  my  attention 
to  stately  city  and  stately  river  with  the  same  tran- 
quil pride  that  we  each  feel  when  the  visitor  steps 
across  our  threshold,  whether  that  be  Southampton 
Water  on  a  gray,  wavy  morning;  Sydney  Harbour 
with  a  regatta  in  full  swing;  or  Table  Mountain, 
radiant  and  new-washed  after  the  Christmas  rains. 
He  had,  quite  rightly,  felt  personally  responsible  for 
the  weather,  and  every  flaming  stretch  of  maple 
since  we  had  entered  the  river.  (The  North-wester 
in  these  parts  is  equivalent  to  the  South-easter  else- 
where, and  may  impress  a  guest  unfavourably.) 
Then  the  autumn  sun  rose,  and  the  man  smiled. 


THE  ROAD  TO  QUEBEC  137 

Personally  and  politically  he  said  he  loathed  the 
city — but  it  was  his. 

"Well,"  he  asked  at  last,  "what  do  you  think? 
Not  so  bad?" 

"Oh  no.  Not  at  all  so  bad,"  I  answered;  and 
it  wasn't  till  much  later  that  I  realised  that  we  had 
exchanged  the  countersign  which  runs  clear  round 
the  Empire. 


A  People  at  Home 

An  up-country  proverb  says,  "She  was  bidden  to 
the  wedding  and  set  down  to  grind  corn."  The 
same  fate,  reversed,  overtook  me  on  my  little  ex- 
cursion. There  is  a  crafty  network  of  organizations 
of  business  men  called  Canadian  Clubs.  They  catch 
people  who  look  interesting,  assemble  their  members 
during  the  mid-day  lunch-hour,  and,  tying  the  victim 
to  a  steak,  bid  him  discourse  on  anything  that  he 
thinks  he  knows.  The  idea  might  be  copied  else- 
where, since  it  takes  men  out  of  themselves  to  listen 
to  matters  not  otherwise  coming  under  their  notice 
and,  at  the  same  time,  does  not  hamper  their  work. 
It  is  safely  short,  too.  The  whole  affair  cannot  ex- 
ceed an  hour,  of  which  the  lunch  fills  half.  The 
Clubs  print  their  speeches  annually,  and  one  gets 
cross-sections  of  many  interesting  questions — from 
practical  forestry  to  State  mints — all  set  out  by 
experts. 

Not  being  an  expert,  the  experience,  to  me,  was 
very  like  hard  work.  Till  then  I  had  thought  speech- 
making  was  a  sort  of  conversational  whist,  that  any 
one  could  cut  in  it.  I  perceive  now  that  it  is  an  Art 
of  conventions   remote  from   anything  that  comes 

138 


A  PEOPLE  AT  HOME  139 

out  of  an  inkpot,  and  of  colours  hard  to  control. 
The  Canadians  seem  to  like  listening  to  speeches,  and, 
though  this  is  by  no  means  a  national  vice,  they 
make  good  oratory  on  occasion.  You  know  the 
old  belief  that  the  white  man  on  brown,  red,  or  black 
lands,  will  throw  back  in  manner  and  instinct  to  the 
type  originally  bred  there?  Thus,  a  speech  in  the 
taal  should  carry  the  deep  roll,  the  direct  belly- 
appeal,  the  reiterated,  cunning  arguments,  and 
the  few  simple  metaphors  of  the  prince  of  com- 
mercial orators,  the  Bantu.  A  New  Zealander  is 
said  to  speak  from  his  diaphragm,  hands  clenched  at 
the  sides,  as  the  old  Maoris  used.  What  we  know  of 
first-class  Australian  oratory  shows  us  the  same 
alertness,  swift  flight,  and  clean  delivery  as  a  thrown 
boomerang.  I  had  half  expected  in  Canadian 
speeches  some  survival  of  the  Redskin's  elaborate 
appeal  to  Suns,  Moons,  and  Mountains — touches 
of  grandiosity  and  ceremonial  invocations.  But 
nothing  that  I  heard  was  referable  to  any  primitive 
stock.  There  was  a  dignity,  a  restraint,  and,  above 
all,  a  weight  in  it,  rather  curious  when  one  thinks  of 
the  influences  to  which  the  land  lies  open.  Red  it 
was  not;  French  it  was  not;  but  a  thing  as  much  by 
itself  as  the  speakers. 

So  with  the  Canadian's  few  gestures  and  the  bear- 
ing of  his  body.  During  the  (Boer)  war  one  watched 
the  contingents  from  every  point  of  view,  and,  most 
likely,  drew  wrong  inferences.     It  struck  me  then 


i4o  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

that  the  Canadian,  even  when  tired,  slacked  off  less 
than  the  men  from  the  hot  countries,  and  while 
resting  did  not  lie  on  his  back  or  his  belly,  but  rather 
on  his  side,  a  leg  doubled  under  him,  ready  to  rise  in 
one  surge. 

This  time  while  I  watched  assemblies  seated,  men 
in  hotels  and  passers-by,  I  fancied  that  he  kept  this 
habit  of  semi-tenseness  at  home  among  his  own;  that 
it  was  the  complement  of  the  man's  still  countenance, 
and  the  even,  lowered  voice.  Looking  at  their  foot- 
marks on  the  ground  they  seem  to  throw  an  almost 
straight  track,  neither  splayed  nor  in-toed,  and  to 
set  their  feet  down  with  a  gentle  forward  pressure, 
rather  like  the  Australian's  stealthy  footfall.  Talk- 
ing among  themselves,  or  waiting  for  friends,  they 
did  not  drum  with  their  fingers,  fiddle  with  their  feet, 
or  feel  the  hair  on  their  face.  These  things  seem 
trivial  enough,  but  when  breeds  are  in  the  making 
everything  is  worth  while.  A  man  told  me  once 
— but  I  never  tried  the  experiment — that  each 
of  our  Four  Races  light  and  handle  fire  in  their 
own  way. 

Small  wonder  we  differ!  Here  is  a  people  with 
no  people  at  their  backs,  driving  the  great  world- 
plough  which  wins  the  world's  bread  up  and  up  over 
the  shoulder  of  the  world — a  spectacle,  as  it  might 
be,  out  of  some  tremendous  Norse  legend.  North 
of  them  lies  Niflheim's  enduring  cold,  with  the  flick 
and  crackle  of  the  Aurora  for  Bifrost  Bridge  that 


A  PEOPLE  AT  HOME  141 

Odin  and  the  iEsirs  visited.  These  people  also  go 
north  year  by  year,  and  drag  audacious  railways 
with  them.  Sometimes  they  burst  into  good  wheat 
or  timber-land,  sometimes  into  mines  of  treasure, 
and  all  the  North  is  full  of  voices — as  South  Africa 
was  once — telling  discoveries  and  making  prophecies. 

When  their  winter  comes,  over  the  greater  part  of 
this  country  outside  the  cities,  they  must  sit  still,  and 
eat  and  drink  as  the  iEsir  did.  In  summer  they 
cram  twelve  months'  work  into  six,  because  between 
such  and  such  dates  certain  far  rivers  will  shut,  and, 
later,  certain  others,  till,  at  last,  even  the  Great 
Eastern  Gate  at  Quebec  locks,  and  men  must  go  in 
and  out  by  the  side-doors  at  Halifax  and  St.  John. 
These  are  conditions  that  make  for  extreme  boldness, 
but  not  for  extravagant  boastings. 

The  maples  tell  when  it  is  time  to  finish,  and  all 
work  in  hand  is  regulated  by  their  warning  signal. 
Some  jobs  can  be  put  through  before  winter;  others 
must  be  laid  aside  ready  to  jump  forward  without  a 
lost  minute  in  spring.  Thus,  from  Quebec  to 
Calgary  a  note  of  drive — not  hustle,  but  drive  and 
finish-up — hummed  like  the  steam-threshers  on  the 
still,  autumn  air. 

Hunters  and  sportsmen  were  coming  in  from  the 
North;  prospectors  with  them,  their  faces  full  of 
mystery,  their  pockets  full  of  samples,  like  pros- 
pectors the  world  over.  They  had  already  been 
wearing  wolf  and   coon   skin   coats.     In   the  great 


i42  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

cities  which  work  the  year  round,  carriage-shops 
exhibited  one  or  two  seductive  nickel-plated  sledges, 
as  a  hint;  for  the  sleigh  is  "the  chariot  at  hand  here 
of  Love."  In  the  country  the  farmhouses  were 
stacking  up  their  wood-piles  within  reach  of  the 
kitchen  door,  and  taking  down  the  fly-screens. 
(One  leaves  these  on,  as  a  rule,  till  the  double  win- 
dows are  brought  up  from  the  cellar,  and  one  has  to 
hunt  all  over  the  house  for  missing  screws.)  Some- 
times one  saw  a  few  flashing  lengths  of  new  stovepipe 
in  a  backyard,  and  pitied  the  owner.  There  is  no 
humour  in  the  old,  bitter-true  stovepipe  jests  of  the 
comic  papers. 

But  the  railways — the  wonderful  railways — told 
the  winter's  tale  most  emphatically.  The  thirty-ton 
coal  cars  were  moving  over  three  thousand  miles 
of  track.  They  grunted  and  lurched  against  each 
other  in  the  switch-yards,  or  thumped  past  statelily 
at  midnight  on  their  way  to  provident  housekeepers 
of  the  prairie  towns.  It  was  not  a  clear  way  either; 
for  the  bacon,  the  lard,  the  apples,  the  butter,  and 
the  cheese,  in  beautiful  white  wood  barrels,  were 
rolling  eastward  towards  the  steamers  before  the 
wheat  should  descend  on  them.  That  is  the  fifth 
act  of  the  great  Year-Play  for  which  the  stage  must 
be  cleared.  On  scores  of  congested  sidings  lay  huge 
girders,  rolled  beams,  limbs,  and  boxes  of  rivets, 
once  intended  for  the  late  Quebec  Bridge — now  so 
much  mere  obstruction — and  the  victuals  had  to 


A  PEOPLE  AT  HOME  143 

pick  their  way  through  'em;  and  behind  the  victuals 
was  the  lumber — clean  wood  out  of  the  mountains — 
logs,  planks,  clapboards,  and  laths,  for  which  we 
pay  such  sinful  prices  in  England — all  seeking  the 
sea.  There  was  housing,  food,  and  fuel  for  millions, 
on  wheels  together,  and  never  a  grain  yet  shifted  of 
the  real  staple  which  men  for  five  hundred  miles 
were  threshing  out  in  heaps  as  high  as  fifty-pound 
villas. 

Add  to  this,  that  the  railways  were  concerned  for 
their  own  new  developments — double-tracking,  loops, 
cut-offs,  taps,  and  feeder  lines,  and  great  swoops  out 
into  untouched  lands  soon  to  be  filled  with  men. 
So  the  construction,  ballast,  and  material  trains,  the 
grading  machines,  the  wrecking  cars  with  their 
camel-like  sneering  cranes — the  whole  plant  of  a 
new  civilisation — had  to  find  room  somewhere  in  the 
general  rally  before  Nature  cried,  "  Lay  off! " 

Does  any  one  remember  that  joyful  strong  con- 
fidence after  the  war,  when  it  seemed  that,  at  last, 
South  Africa  was  to  be  developed — when  men  laid 
out  railways,  and  gave  orders  for  engines,  and  fresh 
rolling-stock,  and  labour,  and  believed  gloriously  in 
the  future?  It  is  true  the  hope  was  murdered 
afterward,  but — multiply  that  good  hour  by  a 
thousand,  and  you  will  have  some  idea  of  how  it 
feels  to  be  in  Canada — a  place  which  even  an  "Im- 
perial" Government  cannot  kill.  I  had  the  luck 
to  be  shown  some  things  from  the  inside — to  listen  to 


144  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

the  details  of  works  projected;  the  record  of  works 
done.  Above  all,  I  saw  what  had  actually  been 
achieved  in  the  fifteen  years  since  I  had  last  come 
that  way.  One  advantage  of  a  new  land  is  that  it 
makes  you  feel  older  than  Time.  I  met  cities 
where  there  had  been  nothing — literally,  absolutely 
nothing,  except,  as  the  fairy  tales  say,  "the  birds 
crying,  and  the  grass  waving  in  the  wind."  Villages 
and  hamlets  had  grown  to  great  towns,  and  the 
great  towns  themselves  had  trebled  and  quadrupled. 
And  the  railways  rubbed  their  hands  and  cried, 
like  the  Afrites  of  old,  "Shall  we  make  a  city  where 
no  city  is;  or  render  flourishing  a  city  that  is 
desolate?"  They  do  it  too,  while,  across  the  water, 
gentlemen,  never  forced  to  suffer  one  day's  physical 
discomfort  in  all  their  lives,  pipe  up  and  say,  "How 
grossly  materialistic!" 

I  wonder  sometimes  whether  any  eminent  novelist, 
philosopher,  dramatist,  or  divine  of  to-day  has  to 
exercise  half  the  pure  imagination,  not  to  mention 
insight,  endurance,  and  self-restraint,  which  is  ac- 
cepted without  comment  in  what  is  called  "the 
material  exploitation  "  of  a  new  country.  Take  only 
the  question  of  creating  a  new  city  at  the  junction 
of  two  lines — all  three  in  the  air.  The  mere  drama  of 
it,  the  play  of  the  human  virtues,  would  fill  a  book. 
And  when  the  work  is  finished,  when  the  city  is, 
when  the  new  lines  embrace  a  new  belt  of  farms,  and 
the  tide  of  the  Wheat  has  rolled  North  another  un- 


A  PEOPLE  AT  HOME  145 

expected  degree,  the  men  who  did  it  break  off,  with- 
out compliments,  to  repeat  the  joke  elsewhere. 

I  had  some  talk  with  a  youngish  man  whose 
business  it  was  to  train  avalanches  to  jump  clear  of 
his  section  of  the  track.  Thor  went  to  Jotunheim 
only  once  or  twice,  and  he  had  his  useful  hammer 
Miolnr  with  him.  This  Thor  lived  in  Jotunheim 
among  the  green-ice-crowned  peaks  of  the  Selkirks — 
where  if  you  disturb  the  giants  at  certain  seasons 
of  the  year,  by  making  noises,  they  will  sit  upon  you 
and  all  your  fine  emotions.  So  Thor  watches  them 
glaring  under  the  May  sun,  or  dull  and  doubly 
dangerous  beneath  the  spring  rains.  He  wards  off 
their  strokes  with  enormous  brattices  of  wood,  wing- 
walls  of  logs  bolted  together,  and  such  other  contrap- 
tions as  experience  teaches.  He  bears  the  giants  no 
malice;  they  do  their  work,  he  his.  What  bothers 
him  a  little  is  that  the  wind  of  their  blows  sometimes 
rips  pines  out  of  the  opposite  hillsides — explodes,  as  it 
were,  a  whole  valley.  He  thinks,  however,  he  can  fix 
things  so  as  to  split  large  avalanches  into  little  ones. 

Another  man,  to  whom  I  did  not  talk,  sticks  in 
my  memory.  He  had  for  years  and  years  inspected 
trains  at  the  head  of  a  heavyish  grade  in  the  moun- 
tains— though  not  half  so  steep  as  the  Hex1 — where 
all  brakes  are  jammed  home,  and  the  cars  slither 
warily  for  ten  miles.  Tire-troubles  there  would  be 
inconvenient,  so  he,  as  the  best  man,  is  given  the 

1  Hex  River,  South  Africa. 


146  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

heaviest  job — monotony  and  responsibility  com- 
bined. He  did  me  the  honour  of  wanting  to  speak  to 
me,  but  first  he  inspected  his  train — on  all  fours  with 
a  hammer.  By  the  time  he  was  satisfied  of  the 
integrity  of  the  underpinnings  it  was  time  for  us  to 
go;  and  all  that  I  got  was  a  friendly  wave  of  the 
hand — a  master  craftsman's  sign,  you  might  call  it. 

Canada  seems  full  of  this  class  of  materialist. 

Which  reminds  me  that  the  other  day  I  saw  the 
Lady  herself  in  the  shape  of  a  tall  woman  of  twenty- 
five  or  six,  waiting  for  her  tram  on  a  street  corner. 
She  wore  her  almost  flaxen-gold  hair  waved,  and 
parted  low  on  the  forehead,  beneath  a  black  as- 
trachan  toque,  with  red  enamel  maple-leaf  hatpin  in 
one  side  of  it.  This  was  the  one  touch  of  colour 
except  the  flicker  of  a  buckle  on  the  shoe.  The 
dark,  tailor-made  dress  had  no  trinkets  or  attach- 
ments, but  fitted  perfectly.  She  stood  for  perhaps 
a  minute  without  any  movement,  both  hands — 
right  bare,  left  gloved — hanging  naturally  at  her 
sides,  the  very  fingers  still,  the  weight  of  the  superb 
body  carried  evenly  on  both  feet,  and  the  profile, 
which  was  that  of  Gudrun  or  Aslauga,  thrown  out 
against  a  dark  stone  column.  What  struck  me  most, 
next  to  the  grave,  tranquil  eyes,  was  her  slow,  un- 
hurried breathing  in  the  hurry  about  her.  She  was 
evidently  a  regular  fare,  for  when  her  tram  stopped 
she  smiled  at  the  lucky  conductor;  and  the  last  I 
saw  of  her  was  a  flash  of  the  sun  on  the  red  maple- 


A  PEOPLE  AT  HOME  147 

leaf,  the  full  face  lighted  by  that  smile,  and  her 
hair  very  pale  gold  against  the  dead  black  fur.  But 
the  power  of  the  mouth,  the  wisdom  of  the  brow,  the 
human  comprehension  of  the  eyes,  and  the  out- 
striking  vitality  of  the  creature  remained.  That  is 
how  /  would  have  my  country  drawn,  were  I  a 
Canadian — and  hung  in  Ottawa  Parliament  House, 
for  the  discouragement  of  prevaricators. 


Cities  and  Spaces 

What  would  you  do  with  a  magic  carpet  if  one  were 
lent  you?  I  ask  because  for  a  month  we  had  a 
private  car  of  our  very  own — a  trifling  affair  less 
than  seventy  foot  long  and  thirty  ton  weight. 
"You  may  find  her  useful,"  said  the  donor  casually, 
"to  knock  about  the  country.  Hitch  on  to  any 
train  you  choose  and  stop  off  where  you  choose." 

So  she  bore  us  over  the  C.P.R.  from  the  Atlantic 
to  the  Pacific  and  back,  and  when  we  had  no  more 
need  of  her,  vanished  like  the  mango  tree  after  the 
trick. 

A  private  car,  though  many  books  have  been 
written  in  it,  is  hardly  the  best  place  from  which  to 
study  a  country,  unless  it  happen  that  you  have  kept 
house  and  seen  the  seasons  round  under  normal 
conditions  on  the  same  continent.  Then  you  know 
how  the  cars  look  from  the  houses;  which  is  not  in 
the  least  as  the  houses  look  from  the  cars.  Then, 
the  very  porter's  brush  in  its  nickel  clip,  the  long 
cathedral-like  aisle  between  the  well-known  green 
seats,  the  toll  of  the  bell  and  the  deep  organ-like  note 
of  the  engine  wake  up  memories;  and  every  sight, 
smell,   and   sound  outside   are  like  old   friends   re- 

148 


CITIES  AND  SPACES  149 

membering  old  days  together.  A  piano-top  buggy 
on  a  muddy,  board-sidewalked  street,  all  cut  up  by 
the  narrow  tires;  the  shingling  at  the  corner  of  a 
verandah  on  a  new-built  house;  a  broken  snake-fence 
girdling  an  old  pasture  of  mulleins  and  skull-headed 
boulders;  a  wisp  of  Virginia  creeper  dying  splendidly 
on  the  edge  of  a  patch  of  corn;  half  a  dozen  panels  of 
snow-fence  above  a  cutting,  or  even  a  shameless 
patent-medicine  advertisement,  yellow  on  the  black 
of  a  tobacco-barn,  can  make  the  heart  thump  and 
the  eyes  fill  if  the  beholder  have  only  touched  the 
life  of  which  they  are  part.  What  must  they  mean 
to  the  native-born?  There  was  a  prairie-bred  girl 
on  the  train,  coming  back  after  a  year  on  the  Con- 
tinent, for  whom  the  pine-belted  hills  with  real 
mountains  behind,  the  solemn  loops  of  the  river,  and 
the  intimate  friendly  farm  had  nothing  to  tell. 

'You  can  do  these  landscapes  better  in  Italy," 
she  explained,  and,  with  the  indescribable  gesture  of 
plain  folk  stifled  in  broken  ground,  "I  want  to  push 
these  hills  away  and  get  into  the  open  again!  I'm 
Winnipeg." 

She  would  have  understood  the  Hanover  Road 
schoolmistress,  back  from  a  visit  to  Cape  Town, 
whom  I  once  saw  drive  of?  into  thirty  miles  of  mirage 
almost  shouting,  "Thank  God,  here's  something 
like  home  at  last." 

Other  people  ricochetted  from  side  to  side  of  the 
car,   reviving  this,   rediscovering  that,   anticipating 


i5o  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

t'other  thing,  which,  sure  enough,  slid  round  the 
next  curve  to  meet  them,  caring  nothing  if  all  the 
world  knew  they  were  home  again;  and  the  newly 
arrived  Englishman  with  his  large  wooden  packing- 
cases  marked  "Settlers'  Effects"  had  no  more  part 
in  the  show  than  a  new  boy  his  first  day  at  school. 
But  two  years  in  Canada  and  one  run  home  will 
make  him  free  of  the  Brotherhood  in  Canada  as  it 
does  anywhere  else.  He  may  grumble  at  certain 
aspects  of  the  life,  lament  certain  richnesses  only  to 
be  found  in  England,  but  as  surely  as  he  grumbles 
so  surely  he  returns  to  the  big  skies,  and  the  big 
chances.  The  failures  are  those  who  complain 
that  the  land  "does  not  know  a  gentleman  when  it 
sees  him."  They  are  quite  right.  The  land  sus- 
pends all  judgment  on  all  men  till  it  has  seen  them 
work.  Thereafter  as  may  be,  but  work  they  must 
because  there  is  a  very  great  deal  to  be  done. 

Unluckily  the  railroads  which  made  the  country 
are  bringing  in  persons  who  are  particular  as  to  the 
nature  and  amenities  of  their  work,  and  if  so  be  they 
do  not  find  precisely  what  they  are  looking  for,  they 
complain  in  print  which  makes  all  men  seem  equal. 

The  special  joy  of  our  trip  lay  in  having  travelled 
the  line  when  it  was  new  and,  like  the  Canada  of 
those  days,  not  much  believed  in,  when  all  the  high 
and  important  officials,  whose  little  fingers  unhooked 
cars,  were  also  small  and  disregarded.  To-day,  things, 
men,  and  cities  were  different,  and  the  story  of  the 


CITIES  AND  SPACES  151 

line  mixed  itself  up  with  the  story  of  the  country,  the 
while  the  car-wheels  clicked  out,  "John  Kino — 
John  Kino!  Nagasaki,  Yokohama,  Hakodate, 
Heh!"  for  we  were  following  in  the  wake  of  the 
Imperial  Limited,  all  full  of  Hongkong  and  Treaty 
Ports  men.  There  were  old,  known,  and  wonderfully 
grown  cities  to  be  looked  at  before  we  could  get 
away  to  the  new  work  out  west,  and,  "What  d'you 
think  of  this  building  and  that  suburb?"  they  said, 
imperiously.  "Come  out  and  see  what  has  been 
done  in  this  generation." 

The  impact  of  a  Continent  is  rather  overwhelming 
till  you  remind  yourself  that  it  is  no  more  than  your 
own  joy  and  love  and  pride  in  your  own  patch  of 
garden  written  a  little  large  over  a  few  more  acres. 
Again,  as  always,  it  was  the  dignity  of  the  cities  that 
impressed — an  austere  Northern  dignity  of  outline, 
grouping,  and  perspective,  aloof  from  the  rush  of 
traffic  in  the  streets.  Montreal,  of  the  black- 
frocked  priests  and  the  French  notices,  had  it;  and 
Ottawa,  of  the  gray  stone  palaces  and  the  St.  Peters- 
burg-like shining  water-frontages;  and  Toronto, 
consumingly  commercial,  carried  the  same  power 
in  the  same  repose.  Men  are  always  building  better 
than  they  know,  and  perhaps  this  steadfast  archi- 
tecture is  waiting  for  the  race  when  their  first  flurry 
of  newly  realized  expansion  shall  have  spent  itself, 
and  the  present  hurrah's-nest  of  telephone-poles  in 
the  streets,  shall  have  been  abolished.     There  are 


1 52  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

strong  objections  to  any  non-fusible,  bi-lingual 
community  within  a  nation,  but  however  much  the 
French  are  made  to  hang  back  in  the  work  of  develop- 
ment, their  withdrawn  and  unconcerned  cathedrals, 
schools,  and  convents,  and  one  aspect  of  the  spirit 
that  breathes  from  them,  make  for  good.  Says 
young  Canada:  "There  are  millions  of  dollars 
worth  of  church  property  in  the  cities  which  aren't 
allowed  to  be  taxed."  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Catholic  schools  and  universities,  though  they  are 
reported  to  keep  up  the  old  medieval  mistrust  of 
Greek,  teach  the  classics  as  lovingly,  tenderly,  and 
intimately  as  the  old  Church  has  always  taught 
them.  After  all,  it  must  be  worth  something  to  say 
your  prayers  in  a  dialect  of  the  tongue  that  Virgil 
handled;  and  a  certain  touch  of  insolence,  more 
magnificent  and  more  ancient  than  the  insolence  of 
present  materialism,  makes  a  good  blend  in  a  new 
land. 

I  had  the  good  fortune  to  see  the  cities  through 
the  eyes  of  an  Englishman  out  for  the  first  time. 
"Have  you  been  to  the  Bank?"  he  cried.  "I've 
never  seen  anything  like  it!"  "What's  the  matter 
with  the  Bank?"  I  asked:  for  the  financial  situation 
across  the  Border  was  at  th^t  moment  more  than 
usual  picturesque.  "It's  wonderful!"  said  he; 
"marble  pillars — acres  of  mosaic — steel  grilles — 
might  be  a  cathedral.  No  one  ever  told  me."  "I 
shouldn't   worry   over    a    Bank   that    pays    its   de- 


CITIES  AND  SPACES  153 

positors,"  I  replied  soothingly.  "There  are  several 
like  it  in  Ottawa  and  Toronto."  Next  he  ran  across 
some  pictures  in  some  palaces,  and  was  downright 
angry  because  no  one  had  told  him  that  there  were 
five  priceless  private  galleries  in  one  city.  "Look 
here!"  he  explained.  "I've  been  seeing  Corots,  and 
Greuzes  and  Gainsboroughs,  and  a  Holbein,  and 
— and  hundreds  of  really  splendid  pictures ! "  "Why 
shouldn't  you?"  I  said.  "They've  given  up  painting 
their  lodges  with  vermilion  hereabouts."  "Yes,  but 
what  I  mean  is,  have  you — seen  the  equipment  of 
their  schools  and  colleges,  desks,  libraries,  and  lava- 
tories? It's  miles  ahead  of  anything  we  have  and 
— no  one  ever  told  me."  "What  was  the  good  of  tell- 
ing? You  wouldn't  have  believed.  There's  a  build- 
ing in  one  of  the  cities,  on  the  lines  of  the  Sheldonian, 
but  better,  and  if  you  go  as  far  as  Winnipeg,  you'll 
see  the  finest  hotel  in  all  the  world." 

"Nonsense!"  he  said.  "You're  pulling  my  leg! 
Winnipeg's  a  prairie-town." 

I  left  him  still  lamenting — about  a  Club  and  a 
Gymnasium  this  time — that  no  one  had  ever  told 
him  about;  and  still  doubting  all  that  he  had  heard 
of  Wonders  to  come. 

If  we  could  only  manacle  four  hundred  Members 
of  Parliament,  like  the  Chinese  in  the  election 
cartoons,  and  walk  them  round  the  Empire,  what  an 
all-comprehending  little  Empire  we  should  be  when 
the  survivors  got  home! 


i54  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

Certainly  the  cities  have  good  right  to  be  proud, 
and  I  waited  for  them  to  boast;  but  they  were  so 
busy  explaining  they  were  only  at  the  beginning  of 
things  that,  for  the  honour  of  the  Family,  I  had  to  do 
the  boasting.  In  this  praiseworthy  game  I  credited 
Melbourne  (rightly,  I  hope,  but  the  pace  was  too 
good  to  inquire)  with  acres  of  municipal  buildings  and 
leagues  of  art  galleries;  enlarged  the  borders  of 
Sydney  harbour  to  meet  a  statement  about  Toronto's 
wharfage;  and  recommended  folk  to  see  Cape  Town 
Cathedral  when  it  should  be  finished.  But  Truth 
will  out  even  on  a  visit.  Our  Eldest  Sister  has  more 
of  beauty  and  strength  inside  her  three  cities  alone 
than  the  rest  of  Us  put  together.  Yet  it  would  do 
her  no  harm  to  send  a  commission  through  the  ten 
great  cities  of  the  Empire  to  see  what  is  being  done 
there  in  the  way  of  street  cleaning,  water-supply, 
and  traffic-regulation. 

Here  and  there  the  people  are  infected  with  the 
unworthy  superstition  of  "hustle,"  which  means 
half-doing  your  appointed  job  and  applauding  your 
own  slapdasherie  for  as  long  a  time  as  would  enable 
you  to  finish  ofF  two  clean  pieces  of  work.  Little 
congestions  of  traffic,  that  an  English  rural  police- 
man, in  a  country  town,  disentangles  automatically, 
are  allowed  to  develop  into  ten-minute  blocks, 
where  waggons  and  men  bang,  and  back,  and  blas- 
pheme, for  no  purpose  except  to  waste  time. 

The  assembly  and  dispersal  of  crowds,  purchase  of 


CITIES  AND  SPACES  155 

tickets,  and  a  good  deal  of  the  small  machinery  of 
life  is  clogged  and  hampered  by  this  unstable, 
southern  spirit  which  is  own  brother  to  Panic. 
"Hustle"  does  not  sit  well  on  the  national  character 
any  more  than  falsetto  or  fidgeting  becomes  grown 
men.  "Drive,"  a  laudable  and  necessary  quality,  is 
quite  different,  and  one  meets  it  up  the  Western 
Road  where  the  new  country  is  being  made. 

We  got  clean  away  from  the  Three  Cities  and 
the  close-tilled  farming  and  orchard  districts,  into 
the  Land  of  Little  Lakes — a  country  of  rushing 
streams,  clear-eyed  ponds,  and  boulders  among 
berrybushes;  all  crying  "Trout"  and  "Bear." 

Not  so  very  long  ago  only  a  few  wise  people  kept 
holiday  in  that  part  of  the  world,  and  they  did  not 
give  away  their  discoveries.  Now  it  has  become  a 
summer  playground  where  people  hunt  and  camp 
at  large.  The  names  of  its  further  rivers  are  known 
in  England,  and  men,  otherwise  sane,  slip  away  from 
London  into  the  birches,  and  come  out  again  bearded 
and  smoke-stained,  when  the  ice  is  thick  enough  to 
cut  a  canoe.  Sometimes  they  go  to  look  for  game; 
sometimes  for  minerals — perhaps,  even,  oil.  No  one 
can  prophesy.  "We  are  only  at  the  beginning  of 
things." 

Said  an  Afrite  of  the  Railway  as  we  passed  in  our 
magic  carpet:  "You've  no  notion  of  the  size  of  our 
tourist-traffic.  It  has  all  grown  up  since  the  early 
'nineties.     The   trolley   car   teaches    people   in   tht 


156  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

towns  to  go  for  little  picnics.  When  they  get  more 
money  they  go  for  long  ones.  All  this  continent  will 
want  playgrounds  soon.     We're  getting  them  ready." 

The  girl  from  Winnipeg  saw  the  morning  frost  lie 
white  on  the  long  grass  at  the  lake  edges,  and 
watched  the  haze  of  mellow  golden  birch  leaves  as 
they  dropped.  "Now  that's  the  way  trees  ought  to 
turn,"  she  said.  "Don't  you  think  our  Eastern 
maple  is  a  little  violent  in  colour?"  Then  we 
passed  through  a  country  where  for  many  hours  the 
talk  in  the  cars  was  of  mines  and  the  treatment  of 
ores.  Men  told  one  tales — prospectors'  yarns  of  the 
sort  one  used  to  hear  vaguely  before  Klondike  or 
Nome  were  public  property.  They  did  not  care 
whether  one  believed  or  doubted.  They,  too,  were 
only  at  the  beginning  of  things — silver  perhaps,  gold 
perhaps,  nickel  perhaps.  If  a  great  city  did  not 
arise  at  such  a  place — the  very  name  was  new  since 
my  day — it  would  assuredly  be  born  within  a  few 
miles  of  it.  The  silent  men  boarded  the  cars,  and 
dropped  off,  and  disappeared  beyond  thickets  and 
hills  precisely  as  the  first  widely  spaced  line  of 
skirmishers  fans  out  and  vanishes  along  the  front  of 
the  day's  battle. 

One  old  man  sat  before  me  like  avenging  Time 
itself,  and  talked  of  prophecies  of  evil  that  had  been 
falsified.  "  They  said  there  wasn't  nothing  here 
excep'  rocks  an'  snow.  They  said  there  never 
wouldn't    be    nothing     here     excep'    the     railroad. 


CITIES  AND  SPACES  157 

There's  them  that  can't  see  yit"  and  he  gimleted  me 
with  a  fierce  eye.  "An'  all  the  while,  fortunes  is 
made — piles  is  made — right  under  our  noses." 

"Have  you  made  your  pile?"  I  asked. 

He  smiled  as  the  artist  smiles — all  true  prospectors 
have  that  lofty  smile — "Me?  No.  I've  been  a 
prospector  most  o'  my  time,  but  I  haven't  lost  any- 
thing. I've  had  my  fun  out  of  the  game.  By  God, 
I've  had  my  fun  out  of  it!" 

I  told  him  how  I  had  once  come  through  when 
land  and  timber  grants  could  have  been  picked  up 
for  half  less  than  nothing. 

"Yes,"  he  said  placidly.  "I  reckon  if  you'd  had 
any  kind  of  an  education  you  could  ha'  made  a 
quarter  of  a  million  dollars  easy  in  those  days. 
And  it's  to  be  made  now  if  you  could  see  where. 
How?  Can  you  tell  me  what  the  capital  of  the 
Hudson  Bay  district's  goin'  to  be?  You  can't. 
Nor  I.  Nor  yet  where  the  six  next  new  cities  is 
going  to  arise.  I  get  off  here,  but  if  I  have  my  health 
I'll  be  out  next  summer  again — prospectin'  North." 

Imagine  a  country  where  men  prospect  till  they 
are  seventy,  with  no  fear  of  fever,  fly,  horse-sickness, 
or  trouble  from  the  natives — a  country  where  food 
and  water  always  taste  good!  He  told  me  curious 
things  about  some  fabled  gold — the  Eternal  Mother- 
lode — out  in  the  North,  which  is  to  humble  the  pride 
of  Nome.  And  yet,  so  vast  is  the  Empire,  he  had 
never  heard  the  name  of  Johannesburg! 


1 58  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

As  the  train  swung  round  the  shores  of  Lake 
Superior  the  talk  swung  over  to  Wheat.  Oh  yes, 
men  said,  there  were  mines  in  the  country — they 
were  only  at  the  beginning  of  mines — but  that 
part  of  the  world  existed  to  clean  and  grade  and 
handle  and  deliver  the  Wheat  by  rail  and  steamer. 
The  track  was  being  duplicated  by  a  few  hundred 
miles  to  keep  abreast  of  the  floods  of  it.  By  and  by 
it  might  be  a  four-track  road.  They  were  only  at 
the  beginning.  Meantime  here  was  the  Wheat 
sprouting,  tender  green,  a  foot  high,  among  a  hun- 
dred sidings  where  it  had  spilled  from  the  cars;  there 
were  the  high-shouldered,  tea-caddy  grain-elevators 
to  clean,  and  the  hospitals  to  doctor  the  Wheat;  here 
was  new,  gaily  painted  machinery  going  forward  to 
reap  and  bind  and  thresh  the  Wheat,  and  all  those 
car-loads  of  workmen  had  been  slapping  down  more 
sidings  against  the  year's  delivery  of  the  Wheat. 

Two  towns  stand  on  the  shores  of  the  lake  less 
than  a  mile  apart.  What  Lloyds  is  to  shipping,  or 
the  College  of  Surgeons  to  medicine,  that  they  are  to 
the  Wheat.  Its  honour  and  integrity  are  in  their 
hands;  and  they  hate  each  other  with  the  pure, 
poisonous,  passionate  hatred  which  makes  towns 
grow.  If  Providence  wiped  out  one  of  them,  the 
survivor  would  pine  away  and  die — a  mateless  hate- 
bird.  Some  day  they  must  unite,  and  the  question 
of  the  composite  name  they  shall  then  carry  already 
vexes    them.     A    man    there    told    me    that    Lake 


CITIES  AND  SPACES  159 

Superior  was  "a  useful  piece  of  water,"  in  that  it  lay 
so  handy  to  the  C.P.R.  tracks.  There  is  a  quiet 
horror  about  the  Great  Lakes  which  grows  as  one 
revisits  them.  Fresh  water  has  no  right  or  call  to  dip 
over  the  horizon,  pulling  down  and  pushing  up  the 
hulls  of  big  steamers;  no  right  to  tread  the  slow, 
deep-sea  dance-step  between  wrinkled  cliffs;  nor  to 
roar  in  on  weed  and  sand  beaches  between  vast 
headlands  that  run  out  for  leagues  into  haze  and  sea 
fog.  Lake  Superior  is  all  the  same  stuff  as  what 
towns  pay  taxes  for,  but  it  engulfs  and  wrecks 
and  drives  ashore,  like  a  fully  accredited  ocean — a 
hideous  thing  to  find  in  the  heart  of  a  continent. 
Some  people  go  sailing  on  it  for  pleasure,  and  it  has 
produced  a  breed  of  sailors  who  bear  the  same 
relation  to  the  salt-water  variety  as  a  snake-charmer 
does  to  a  lion-tamer. 

Yet  it  is  undoubtedly  a  useful  piece  of  water. 


Newspapers  and  Democracy 

Let  it  be  granted  that,  as  the  loud-voiced  herald 
hired  by  the  Eolithic  tribe  to  cry  the  news  of  the 
coming  day  along  the  caves,  preceded  the  chosen 
Tribal  Bard  who  sang  the  more  picturesque  history 
of  the  tribe,  so  is  Journalism  senior  to  Literature,  in 
that  Journalism  meets  the  first  tribal  need  after 
warmth,  food,  and  women. 

In  new  countries  it  shows  clear  trace  of  its  descent 
from  the  Tribal  Herald.  A  tribe  thinly  occupying 
large  spaces  feels  lonely.  It  desires  to  hear  the  roll- 
call  of  its  members  cried  often  and  loudly;  to  comfort 
itself  with  the  knowledge  that  there  are  companions 
just  below  the  horizon.  It  employs,  therefore, 
heralds  to  name  and  describe  all  who  pass.  That  is 
why  newspapers  of  new  countries  seem  often  so 
outrageously  personal.  The  tribe,'  moreover,  needs 
quick  and  sure  knowledge  of  everything  that  touches 
on  its  daily  life  in  the  big  spaces — earth,  air,  and 
water  news  which  the  Older  Peoples  have  put  behind 
them.  That  is  why  its  newspapers  so  often  seem 
so  laboriously  trivial. 

For  example,  a  red-nosed  member  of  the  tribe, 
Pete  O'Halloran,  comes  in  thirty  miles  to  have  his 

160 


NEWSPAPERS  AND  DEMOCRACY     161 

horse  shod,  and  incidentally  smashes  the  king-bolt 
of  his  buckboard  at  a  bad  place  in  the  road.  The 
Tribal  Herald — a  thin  weekly,  with  a  patent  inside — 
connects  the  red  nose  and  the  breakdown  with  an 
innuendo  which,  to  the  outsider,  is  clumsy  libel. 
But  the  Tribal  Herald  understands  that  two-and- 
seventy  families  of  the  tribe  may  use  that  road 
weekly.  It  concerns  them  to  discover  whether  the 
accident  was  due  to  Pete  being  drunk  or,  as  Pete 
protests,  to  the  neglected  state  of  the  road.  Fifteen 
men  happen  to  know  that  Pete's  nose  is  an  affliction, 
not  an  indication.  One  of  them  loafs  across  and 
explains  to  the  Tribal  Herald,  who  next  week  cries 
aloud  that  the  road  ought  to  be  mended.  Mean- 
time Pete,  warm  to  the  manow  at  having  focussed 
the  attention  of  his  tribe  for  a  few  moments,  retires 
thirty  miles  up-stage,  pursued  by  advertisements 
of  buckboards  guaranteed  not  to  break  their  king- 
bolts, and  later  (which  is  what  the  tribe  were  after 
all  the  time)  some  tribal  authority  or  other  mends 
the  roads. 

This  is  only  a  big-scale  diagram,  but  with  a  little 
attention  you  can  see  the  tribal  instinct  of  self- 
preservation  quite  logically  underrunning  all  sorts 
of  queer  modern  developments. 

As  the  tribe  grows,  and  men  do  not  behold  the 
horizon  from  edge  to  unbroken  edge,  their  desire  to 
know  all  about  the  next  man  weakens  a  little — but 
not  much.     Outside  the  cities  are  still  the  long  dis- 


i62  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

tances,  the  "vast,  unoccupied  areas"  of  the  adver- 
tisements; and  the  men  who  come  and  go  yearn  to 
keep  touch  with  and  report  themselves  as  of  old  to 
their  lodges.  A  man  stepping  out  of  the  dark  into 
the  circle  of  the  fires  naturally,  if  he  be  a  true  man, 
holds  up  his  hands  and  says,  "I,  So-and-So,  am  here." 
You  can  watch  the  ritual  in  full  swing  at  any  hotel 
when  the  reporter  {pro  Tribal  Herald)  runs  his  eyes 
down  the  list  of  arrivals,  and  before  he  can  turn  from 
the  register  is  met  by  the  newcomer,  who,  without 
special  desire  for  notoriety,  explains  his  business  and 
intentions.  Observe,  it  is  always  at  evening  that 
the  reporter  concerns  himself  with  strangers.  By 
day  he  follows  the  activities  of  his  own  city  and  the 
doings  of  near-by  chiefs;  but  when  it  is  time  to  close 
the  stockade,  to  lager  the  waggons,  to  draw  the  thorn- 
bush  back  into  the  gap,  then  in  all  lands  he  reverts  to 
the  Tribal  Herald,  who  is  also  the  tribal  Outer  Guard. 

There  are  countries  where  a  man  is  indecently 
pawed  over  by  chattering  heralds  who  bob  their 
foul  torches  in  his  face  till  he  is  singed  and  smoked 
at  once.  In  Canada  the  necessary  "Stand  and  de- 
liver your  sentiments"  goes  through  with  the  large 
decency  that  stamps  all  the  Dominion.  A  stranger's 
words  are  passed  on  to  the  tribe  quite  accurately; 
no  dirt  is  put  into  his  mouth,  and  where  the  heralds 
judge  that  it  would  be  better  not  to  translate  certain 
remarks  they  courteously  explain  why. 

It  was  always  delightful  to  meet  the  reporters,  for 


NEWSPAPERS  AND  DEMOCRACY     163 

they  were  men  interested  in  their  land,  with  the 
keen,  unselfish  interest  that  one  finds  in  young  house- 
surgeons  or  civilians.  Thanks  to  the  (Boer)  war,  many 
of  them  had  reached  out  to  the  ends  of  our  earth,  and 
spoke  of  the  sister  nations  as  it  did  one  good  to  hear. 
Consequently  the  interviews — which  are  as  dreary 
for  the  reporter  as  the  reported — often  turned  into 
pleasant  and  unpublished  talks.  One  felt  at  every 
turn  of  the  quick  sentences  to  be  dealing  with  made 
and  trained  players  of  the  game — balanced  men  who 
believed  in  decencies  not  to  be  disregarded,  confi- 
dences not  to  be  violated,  and  honour  not  to  be 
mocked.  (This  may  explain  what  men  and  women 
have  told  me — that  there  is  very  little  of  the  brutal 
domestic  terrorism  of  the  Press  in  Canada,  and  not 
much  blackmailing.)  They  neither  spat  nor  wrig- 
gled; they  interpolated  no  juicy  anecdotes  of  murder 
or  theft  among  their  acquaintance;  and  not  once  be- 
tween either  ocean  did  they  or  any  other  fellow- 
subjects  volunteer  that  their  country  was  "law- 
abiding." 

You  know  the  First  Sign-post  on  the  Great  Main 
Road?  "When  a  Woman  advertises  that  she  is 
virtuous,  a  Man  that  he  is  a  gentleman,  a  Community 
that  it  is  loyal,  or  a  Country  that  it  is  law-abiding — 
go  the  other  way!" 

Yet,  while  the  men's  talk  was  so  good  and  new, 
their  written  word  seemed  to  be  cast  in  conventional, 
not  to  say  old-fashioned,  moulds.     A  quarter  of  a 


164  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

century  ago  a  sub-editor,  opening  his  mail,  could 
identify  the  Melbourne  Argus,  the  Sydney  Morning 
Herald,  or  the  Cape  Times  as  far  as  he  could  see  them. 
Even  unheaded  clippings  from  them  declared  their 
origin  as  a  piece  of  hide  betrays  the  beast  that  wore 
it.  But  he  noticed  then  that  Canadian  journals  left 
neither  spoor  nor  scent — might  have  blown  in  from 
anywhere  between  thirty  degrees  of  latitude — and 
had  to  be  carefully  identified  by  hand.  To-day  the 
spacing,  the  headlines,  the  advertising  of  Canadian 
papers,  the  chessboard-like  look  of  the  open  page 
which  should  be  a  daily  beautiful  study  in  black  and 
white,  the  brittle  pulp-paper,  the  machine-set  type, 
are  all  as  standardized  as  the  railway  cars  of  the 
Continent.  Indeed,  looking  through  a  mass  of 
Canadian  journals  is  like  trying  to  find  one's  own 
sleeper  in  a  corridor  train.  Newspaper  offices  are 
among  the  most  conservative  organizations  in  the 
world;  but  surely  after  twenty-five  years  some 
changes  might  be  permitted  to  creep  in;  some  origi- 
nal convention  of  expression  or  assembly  might  be 
developed. 

I  drew  up  to  this  idea  cautiously  among  a  knot  of 
fellow-craftsmen.  "You  mean,"  said  one  straight- 
eyed  youth,  "that  we  are  a  back-number  copying 
back-numbers?" 

It  was  precisely  what  I  did  mean,  so  I  made  haste 
to  deny  it.  "We  know  that,"  he  said  cheerfully. 
"Remember  we  haven't  the  sea  all  round  us — and 


NEWSPAPERS  AND  DEMOCRACY     165 

the  postal  rates  to  England  have  only  just  been  low- 
ered.    It  will  all  come  right." 

Surely  it  will;  but  meantime  one  hates  to  think  of 
these  splendid  people  using  second-class  words  to 
express  first-class  emotions. 

And  so  naturally  from  Journalism  to  Democracy. 
Every  country  is  entitled  to  her  reservations,  and 
pretences,  but  the  more  "democratic"  a  land  is  the 
more  make-believes  must  the  stranger  respect. 
Some  of  the  Tribal  Heralds  wTere  very  good  to  me 
in  this  matter,  and,  as  it  were,  nudged  me  when 
it  was  time  to  duck  in  the  House  of  Rimmon.  Dur- 
ing their  office  hours  they  professed  an  unflinching 
belief  in  the  blessed  word  "Democracy,"  which 
means  any  crowd  on  the  move — that  is  to  say,  the 
helpless  thing  which  breaks  through  floors  and 
falls  into  cellars;  overturns  pleasure-boats  by  rushing 
from  port  to  starboard;  stamps  men  into  pulp  be- 
cause it  thinks  it  has  lost  sixpence,  and  jams  and 
grills  in  the  doorways  of  blazing  theatres.  Out 
of  office,  like  every  one  else,  they  relaxed.  Many 
winked,  a  few  were  flippant,  but  they  all  agreed 
that  the  only  drawback  to  Democracy  was  Demos 
— a  jealous  God  of  primitive  tastes  and  despotic  ten- 
dencies. I  received  a  faithful  portrait  of  him  from  a 
politician  who  had  worshipped  him  all  his  life.  It 
was  practically  the  Epistle  of  Jeremy — the  sixth 
chapter  of  Baruch — done  into  unquotable  English. 

But  Canada  is  not  yet  an  ideal  Democracy.     For 


166  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

one  thing  she  has  had  to  work  hard  among  rough- 
edged  surroundings  which  carry  inevitable  conse- 
quences. For  another,  the  law  in  Canada  exists  and 
is  administered,  not  as  a  surprise,  a  joke,  a  favour, 
a  bribe,  or  a  Wrestling  Turk  exhibition,  but  as  an 
integral  part  of  the  national  character — no  more  to  be 
forgotten  or  talked  about  than  one's  trousers.  If  you 
kill,  you  hang.  If  you  steal,  you  go  to  jail.  This 
has  worked  toward  peace,  self-respect,  and,  I  think, 
the  innate  dignity  of  the  people.  On  the  other  hand 
— which  is  where  the  trouble  will  begin — railways 
and  steamers  make  it  possible  nowadays  to  bring  in 
persons  who  need  never  lose  touch  of  hot  and  cold 
water-taps,  spread  tables,  and  crockery  till  they  are 
turned  out,  much  surprised,  into  the  wilderness. 
They  clean  miss  the  long  weeks  of  salt-water  and 
the  slow  passage  across  the  plains  which  pickled  and 
tanned  the  early  emigrants.  They  arrive  with  soft 
bodies  and  unaired  souls.  I  had  this  vividly  brought 
home  to  me  by  a  man  on  a  train  among  the  Selkirks. 
He  stood  on  the  safely  railed  rear-platform,  looked  at 
the  gigantic  pine-furred  shoulder  round  which  men  at 
their  lives'  risk  had  led  every  yard  of  the  track,  and 
chirruped :  "  I  say,  why  can't  all  this  be  nationalised  ? " 
There  was  nothing  under  heaven  except  the  snows 
and  the  steep  to  prevent  him  from  dropping  off  the 
cars  and  hunting  a  mine  for  himself.  Instead  of  which 
he  went  into  the  dining-car.  That  is  one  type. 
A  man  told  me  the  old  tale  of  a  crowd  of  Russian 


NEWSPAPERS  AND  DEMOCRACY     167 

immigrants  who  at  a  big  fire  in  a  city  'verted  to  the 
ancestral  type,  and  blocked  the  streets  yelling, 
"Down  with  the  Czar!"  That  is  another  type. 
A  few  days  later  I  was  shown  a  wire  stating  that  a 
community  of  Doukhobors — Russians  again — had, 
not  for  the  first  time,  undressed  themselves,  and 
were  fleeing  up  the  track  to  meet  the  Messiah  before 
the  snow  fell.  Police  were  pursuing  them  with 
warm  underclothing,  and  trains  would  please  take 
care  not  to  run  over  them. 

So  there  you  have  three  sort  of  steam-borne  un- 
fitness— soft,  savage,  and  mad.  There  is  a  fourth 
brand,  which  may  be  either  home-grown  or  imported, 
but  democracies  do  not  recognize  it,  of  downright 
bad  folk — grown,  healthy  men  and  women  who 
honestly  rejoice  in  doing  evil.  These  four  classes 
acting  together  might  conceivably  produce  a  rather 
pernicious  democracy;  alien  hysteria,  blood-craze, 
and  the  like  reinforcing  local  ignorance,  sloth,  and 
arrogance.  For  example,  I  read  a  letter  in  a  paper 
sympathising  with  these  same  Doukhobors.  The 
writer  knew  a  community  of  excellent  people  in 
England  (you  see  where  the  rot  starts!)  who  lived 
barefoot,  paid  no  taxes,  ate  nuts,  and  were  above 
marriage.  They  were  a  soulful  folk,  living  pure 
lives.  The  Doukhobors  were  also  pure  and  soulful, 
entitled  in  a  free  country  to  live  their  own  lives, 
and  not  to  be  oppressed,  etc.,  etc.  (Imported  soft, 
observe,  playing  up  to  Imported  mad.)     Meantime, 


168  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

disgusted  police  were  chasing  the  Doukhobors  into 
flannels  that  they  might  live  to  produce  children  fit 
to  consort  with  the  sons  of  the  man  who  wrote  that 
letter  and  the  daughters  of  the  crowd  that  lost  their 
heads  at  the  fire. 

"All  of  which,"  men  and  women  answered,  "we 
admit.  But  what  can  we  do?  We  want  people." 
And  they  showed  vast  and  well-equipped  schools, 
where  the  children  of  Slav  immigrants  are  taught 
English  and  the  songs  of  Canada.  "When  they 
grow  up,"  people  said,  "you  can't  tell  them  from 
Canadians."  It  was  a  wonderful  work.  The 
teacher  holds  up  pens,  reels,  and  so  forth,  giving  the 
name  in  English;  the  children  repeating  Chinese 
fashion.  Presently  when  they  have  enough  words 
they  can  bridge  back  to  the  knowledge  they  learned 
in  their  own  country,  so  that  a  boy  of  twelve,  at, 
say,  the  end  of  a  year,  will  produce  a  well-written 
English  account  of  his  journey  from  Russia,  how 
much  his  mother  paid  for  food  by  the  way,  and 
where  his  father  got  his  first  job.  He  will  also  lay 
his  hand  on  his  heart,  and  say,  "I — am — a — Can- 
adian." This  gratifies  the  Canadian,  who  naturally 
purrs  over  an  emigrant  owing  everything  to  the 
land  which  adopted  him  and  set  him  on  his  feet. 
The  Lady  Bountiful  of  an  English  village  takes  the 
same  interest  in  a  child  she  has  helped  on  in  the 
world.  And  the  child  repays  by  his  gratitude  and 
good  behaviour. 


NEWSPAPERS  AND  DEMOCRACY     169 

Personally,  one  cannot  care  much  for  those  who 
have  renounced  their  own  country.  They  may  have 
had  good  reason,  but  they  have  broken  the  rules  of 
the  game,  and  ought  to  be  penalised  instead  of 
adding  to  their  score.  Nor  is  it  true,  as  men  pre- 
tend, that  a  few  full  meals  and  fine  clothes  obliterate 
all  taint  of  alien  instinct  and  reversion.  A  thousand 
years  cannot  be  as  yesterday  for  mankind;  and  one 
has  only  to  glance  at  the  races  across  the  Border  to 
realise  how  in  outlook,  manner,  expression,  and 
morale  the  South  and  South-east  profoundly  and 
fatally  affects  the  North  and  North-west.  That  was 
why  the  sight  of  the  beady-eyed,  muddy-skinned, 
aproned  women,  with  handkerchiefs  on  their  heads 
and  Oriental  bundles  in  their  hands,  always  distressed 


one 
<< 


But   why   must    you    get   this   stuff?"   I   asked. 
'You  know  it  is  not  your  equal,  and  it  knows  that 
it    is    not    your    equal;    and    that    is    bad    for   you 
both.     What  is  the  matter  with  the  English  as  im- 
migrants?" 

The  answers  were  explicit,  "Because  the  English 
do  not  work.  Because  we  are  sick  of  Remittance- 
men  and  loafers  sent  out  here.  Because  the  English 
are  rotten  with  Socialism.  Because  the  English 
don't  fit  with  our  life.  They  kick  at  our  way  of 
doing  things.  They  are  always  telling  us  how 
things  are  done  in  England.  They  carry  frills! 
Don't  you  know  the  story  of  the  Englishman  who 


170  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

lost  his  way  and  was  found  half-dead  of  thirst  beside 
a  river?  When  he  was  asked  why  he  didn't  drink,  he 
said,  "How  the  deuce  can  I  without  a  glars?': 

"But,"  I  argued  over  three  thousand  miles  of 
country,  "all  these  are  excellent  reasons  for  bringing 
in  the  Englishman.  It  is  true  that  in  his  own  coun- 
try he  is  taught  to  shirk  work,  because  kind,  silly 
people  fall  over  each  other  to  help  and  debauch  and 
amuse  him.  Here,  General  January  will  stiffen  him 
up.  Remittance-men  are  an  affliction  to  every 
branch  of  the  Family,  but  your  manners  and  morals 
can't  be  so  tender  as  to  suffer  from  a  few  thousand  of 
them  among  your  six  millions.  As  to  the  English- 
man's Socialism,  he  is,  by  nature,  the  most  un- 
social animal  alive.  What  you  call  Socialism  is  his 
intellectual  equivalent  for  Diabolo  and  Limerick 
competitions.  As  to  his  criticisms,  you  surely 
wouldn't  marry  a  woman  who  agreed  with  you  in 
everything,  and  you  ought  to  choose  your  immi- 
grants on  the  same  lines.  You  admit  that  the 
Canadian  is  too  busy  to  kick  at  anything.  The 
Englishman  is  a  born  kicker.  ("Yes,  he  is  all  that,'' 
they  said.)  He  kicks  on  principle,  and  that  is  what 
makes  for  civilisation.  So  did  your  Englishman's 
instinct  about  the  glass.  Every  new  country 
needs — vitally  needs — one-half  of  one  per  cent  of  its 
population  trained  to  die  of  thirst  rather  than 
drink  out  of  their  hands.  You  are  always  talking 
of  the  second   generation  of  your  Smyrniotes  and 


NEWSPAPERS  AND  DEMOCRACY     171 

Bessarabians.  Think  what  the  second  generation 
of  the  English  are!" 

They  thought — quite  visibly — but  they  did  not 
much  seem  to  relish  it.  There  was  a  queer  stringhalt 
in  their  talk — a  conversational  shy  across  the  road — 
when  one  touched  on  these  subjects.  After  a  while 
I  went  to  a  Tribal  Herald  whom  I  could  trust,  and 
demanded  of  him  point-blank  where  the  trouble 
really  lay,  and  who  was  behind  it. 

"It  is  Labour,"  he  said.  "You  had  better  leave 
it  alone." 


Labour 

One  cannot  leave  a  thing  alone  if  it  is  thrust  under 
the  nose  at  every  turn.  I  had  not  quitted  the  Quebec 
steamer  three  minutes  when  I  was  asked  point- 
blank:  "What  do  you  think  of  the  question  of 
Asiatic  Exclusion  which  is  Agitating  our  Com- 
munity?" 

The  Second  Sign-Post  on  the  Great  Main  Road 
says:  "  If  a  Community  is  agitated  by  a  Question — 
inquire  politely  after  the  health  of  the  Agitator." 
This  I  did,  without  success;  and  had  to  temporise  all 
across  the  Continent  till  I  could  find  some  one  to 
help  me  to  acceptable  answers.  The  Question 
appears  to  be  confined  to  British  Columbia.  There, 
after  a  while,  the  men  who  had  their  own  reasons  for 
not  wishing  to  talk  referred  me  to  others  who  ex- 
plained, and  on  the  acutest  understanding  that  no 
names  were  to  be  published  (it  is  sweet  to  see  engineers 
afraid  of  being  hoist  by  their  own  petards)  one  got 
more  or  less  at  something  like  facts. 

The  Chinaman  has  always  been  in  the  habit  of 
coming  to  British  Columbia,  where  he  makes,  as  he 
does  elsewhere,  the  finest  servant  in  the  world.  No 
one,   I   was   assured   on   all   hands,   objects   to  the 

172 


LABOUR  173 

biddable  Chinaman.  He  takes  work  which  no 
white  man  in  a  new  country  will  handle,  and  when 
kicked  by  the  mean  white  will  not  grossly  retaliate. 
He  has  always  paid  for  the  privilege  of  making  his 
fortune  on  this  wonderful  coast,  but  with  singular 
forethought  and  statesmanship,  the  popular  Will, 
some  few  years  ago,  decided  to  double  the  head-tax 
on  his  entry.  Strange  as  it  may  appear,  the  China- 
man now  charges  double  for  his  services,  and  is 
scarce  at  that.  This  is  said  to  be  one  of  the  reasons 
why  overworked  white  women  die  or  go  ofF  their 
heads;  and  why  in  new  cities  you  can  see  blocks  of 
flats  being  built  to  minimize  the  inconveniences  of 
housekeeping  without  help.  The  birth-rate  will 
fall  later  in  exact  proportion  to  those  flats. 

Since  the  Russo-Japanese  War  the  Japanese  have 
taken  to  coming  over  to  British  Columbia.  They 
also  do  work  which  no  white  man  will;  such  as 
hauling  wet  logs  for  lumber  mills  out  of  cold  water 
at  from  eight  to  ten  shillings  a  day.  They  supply 
the  service  in  hotels  and  dining-rooms  and  keep 
small  shops.  The  trouble  with  them  is  that  they 
are  just  a  little  too  good,  and  when  attacked  defend 
themselves  with  asperity. 

A  fair  sprinkling  of  Punjabis — ex-soldiers,  Sikhs, 
Muzbis,  and  Jats — are  coming  in  on  the  boats.  The 
plague  at  home  seems  to  have  made  them  restless, 
but  I  could  not  gather  why  so  many  of  them  come 
from  Shahpur,  Phillour,  and  Jullundur  way.     These 


i74  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

men  do  not,  of  course,  offer  for  house-service,  but 
work  in  the  lumber  mills,  and  with  the  least  little 
care  and  attention  could  be  made  most  valuable. 
Some  one  ought  to  tell  them  not  to  bring  their  old 
men  with  them,  and  better  arrangements  should  be 
made  for  their  remitting  money  home  to  their 
villages.  They  are  not  understood,  of  course;  but 
they  are  not  hated. 

The  objection  is  all  against  the  Japanese.  So 
far — except  that  they  are  said  to  have  captured  the 
local  fishing  trade  at  Vancouver,  precisely  as  the 
Malays  control  the  Cape  Town  fish  business — 
they  have  not  yet  competed  with  the  whites;  but 
I  was  earnestly  assured  by  many  men  that  there  was 
danger  of  their  lowering  the  standard  of  life  and 
wages.  The  demand,  therefore,  in  certain  quarters 
is  that  they  go — absolutely  and  unconditionally. 
(You  may  have  noticed  that  Democracies  are  strong 
on  the  imperative  mood.)  An  attempt  was  made  to 
shift  them  shortly  before  I  came  to  Vancouver,  but  it 
was  not  very  successful,  because  the  Japanese 
barricaded  their  quarters  and  flocked  out,  a  broken 
bottle  held  by  the  neck  in  either  hand,  which  they 
jabbed  in  the  faces  of  the  demonstrators.  It  is,  per- 
haps, easier  to  haze  and  hammer  bewildered  Hindus 
and  Tamils,  as  is  being  done  across  the  Border, 
than  to  stampede  the  men  of  the  Yalu  and  Liaoyang.1 

But  when  one  began  to  ask  questions  one  got  lost 

■Battles  in  the  Russo-Japanese  War. 


LABOUR  175 

in  a  maze  of  hints,  reservations,  and  orations,  mostly 
delivered  with  constraint,  as  though  the  talkers 
were  saying  a  piece  learned  by  heart.  Here  are 
some  samples: — 

A  man  penned  me  in  a  corner  with  a  single  heavily 
capitalised  sentence.  "There  is  a  General  Senti- 
ment among  Our  People  that  the  Japanese  Must 
Go,"  said  he. 

"Very  good,"  said  I.  "How  d'you  propose  to 
set  about  it?" 

"That  is  nothing  to  us.  There  is  a  General 
Sentiment,"  etc. 

"Quite  so.  Sentiment  is  a  beautiful  thing,  but 
what  are  you  going  to  do?"  He  did  not  condescend 
to  particulars,  but  kept  repeating  the  sentiment, 
which,  as  I  promised,  I  record. 

Another  man  was  a  little  more  explicit.  "We 
desire,"  he  said,  "to  keep  the  Chinaman.  But  the 
Japanese  must  go." 

"Then  who  takes  their  place?  Isn't  this  rather  a 
new  country  to  pitch  people  out  of?" 

"We  must  develop  our  Resources  slowly,  sir — 
with  an  Eye  to  the  Interests  of  our  Children.  We 
must  preserve  the  Continent  for  Races  which  will 
assimilate  with  Ours.  We  must  not  be  swamped  by 
Aliens." 

"Then  bring  in  your  own  races  and  bring  'em  in 
quick,"  I  ventured. 

This  is  the  one  remark  one  must  not  make  in 


i76  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

certain  quarters  of  the  West;  and  I  lost  caste  heavily 
while  he  explained  (exactly  as  the  Dutch  did  at  the 
Cape  years  ago)  how  British  Columbia  was  by 
no  means  so  rich  as  she  appeared;  that  she  was 
throttled  by  capitalists  and  monopolists  of  all  kinds; 
that  white  labour  had  to  be  laid  off  and  fed  and 
warmed  during  the  winter;  that  living  expenses 
were  enormously  high;  that  they  were  at  the  end 
of  a  period  of  prosperity,  and  were  now  enter- 
ing on  lean  years;  and  that  whatever  steps  were 
necessary  for  bringing  in  more  white  people  should 
be  taken  with  extreme  caution.  Then  he  added 
that  the  railway  rates  to  British  Columbia  were  so 
high  that  emigrants  were  debarred  from  coming  on 
there. 

"But  haven't  the  rates  been  reduced?"  I 
asked. 

"Yes — yes,  I  believe  they  have,  but  immigrants 
are  so  much  in  demand  that  they  are  snapped  up 
before  they  have  got  so  far  West.  You  must  re- 
member, too,  that  skilled  labour  is  not  like  agricul- 
tural labour.  It  is  dependent  on  so  many  con- 
siderations.    And  the  Japanese  must  go." 

"So  people  have  told  me.  But  I  heard  stories  of 
dairies  and  fruit-farms  in  British  Columbia  being 
thrown  up  because  there  was  no  labour  to  milk  or 
pick  the  fruit.     Is  that  true,  d'you  think  ? " 

"Well,  you  can't  expect  a  man  with  all  the  chances 
that  our  country  offers  him  to  milk  cows  in  a  pasture. 


LABOUR  177 

A  Chinaman  can  do  that.  We  want  races  that  will 
assimilate  with  ours,"  etc.,  etc. 

"But  didn't  the  Salvation  Army  offer  to  bring  in 
three  or  four  thousand  English  some  short  time  ago? 
What  came  of  that  idea?" 

"It— er— fell  through." 

"Why?" 

"For  political  reasons,  I  believe.  We  do  not  want 
People  who  will  lower  the  Standard  of  Living. 
That  is  why  the  Japanese  must  go." 

"Then  why  keep  the  Chinese?" 

"We  can  get  on  with  the  Chinese.  We  can't  get 
on  without  the  Chinese.  But  we  must  have  Emigra- 
tion of  a  Type  that  will  assimilate  with  Our  People. 
I  hope  I  have  made  myself  clear  ? " 

I  hoped  that  he  had,  too. 

Now  hear  a  wife,  a  mother,  and  a  housekeeper. 
"We  have  to  pay  for  this  precious  state  of  things 
with  our  health  and  our  children's.  Do  you  know 
the  saying  that  the  Frontier  is  hard  on  women  and 
cattle?  This  isn't  the  frontier,  but  in  some  respects 
it's  worse,  because  we  have  all  the  luxuries  and 
appearances — the  pretty  glass  and  silver  to  put  on 
the  table.  We  have  to  dust,  polish,  and  arrange  'em 
after  we've  done  our  housework.  I  don't  suppose 
that  means  anything  to  you,  but — try  it  for  a 
month!  We  have  no  help.  A  Chinaman  costs 
fifty  or  sixty  dollars  a  month  now.  Our  husbands 
can't  always  afford  that.     How  old  would  you  take 


178  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

me  for?  I'm  not  thirty.  Well  thank  God,  I  stopped 
my  sister  coming  out  West.  Oh  yes,  it's  a  fine 
country — for  men." 

Can't  you  import  servants  from  England?" 
I  can't  pay  a  girl's  passage  in  order  to  have  her 
married    in   three    months.     Besides,    she   wouldn't 
work.     They  won't  when  they  see  Chinamen  work- 


ing. 


"Do  you  object  to  the  Japanese,  too?" 

"Of  course  not.  No  one  does.  It's  only  politics. 
The  wives  of  the  men  who  earn  six  and  seven  dollars 
a  day — skilled  labour  they  call  it — have  Chinese  and 
Jap  servants.  We  can't  afford  it.  We  have  to 
think  of  saving  for  the  future,  but  those  other  people 
live  up  to  every  cent  they  earn.  They  know  they  re 
all  right.  They're  Labour.  They'll  be  looked 
after,  whatever  happens.  You  can  see  how  the 
State  looks  after  me." 

A  little  later  I  had  occasion  to  go  through  a  great 
and  beautiful  city  between  six  and  seven  of  a  crisp 
morning.  Milk  and  fish,  vegetables,  etc.,  were 
being  delivered  to  the  silent  houses  by  Chinese  and 
Japanese.  Not  a  single  man  was  visible  on  that 
chilly  job. 

Later  still  a  man  came  to  see  me,  without  too 
publicly  giving  his  name.  He  was  in  a  small  way  of 
business,  and  told  me  (others  had  said  much  the 
same  thing)  that  if  I  gave  him  away  his  business 
would  suffer.     He  talked  for  half  an  hour  on  end. 


LABOUR  179 

"Am  I  to  understand,  then,"  I  said,  "that  what 
you  call  Labour  absolutely  dominates  this  part  of 
the  world?" 

He  nodded. 

"That  it  is  difficult  to  get  skilled  labour  into  here  ? " 

"Difficult?  My  God,  if  I  want  to  get  an  extra 
hand  for  my  business — I  pay  Union  wages,  of 
course — I  have  to  arrange  to  get  him  here  secretly. 
I  have  to  go  out  and  meet  him,  accidental-like,  down 
the  line,  and  if  the  Unions  find  out  that  he  is  coming, 
they,  like  as  not,  order  him  back  East,  or  turn  him 
down  across  the  Border." 

"  Even  if  he  has  his  Union  ticket  ?     Why  ? " 

"They'll  tell  him  that  labour  conditions  are  not 
good  here.  He  knows  what  that  means.  He'll 
turn  back  quick  enough.  I'm  in  a  small  way  of 
business,  and  I  can't  afford  to  take  any  chances 
fighting  the  Unions." 

"What  would  happen  if  you  did?" 

"D'you  know  what's  happening  across  the  Border? 
Men  get  blown  up  there — with  dynamite." 

"But  this  isn't  across  the  Border?" 

"It's  a  damn-sight  too  near  to  be  pleasant.  And 
witnesses  get  blown  up,  too.  You  see,  the  Labour 
situation  ain't  run  from  our  side  the  line.  It's 
worked  from  down  under.  You  may  have  noticed 
men  were  rather  careful  when  they  talked  about  it?" 

"Yes,  I  noticed  all  that." 

"Well,  it  ain't  a  pleasant  state  of  affairs.     I  don't 


180  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

say  that  the  Unions  here  would  do  anything  to  you — 
and  please  understand  I'm  all  for  the  rights  of 
Labour  myself.  Labour  has  no  better  friend  than 
me — I've  been  a  working  man,  though  I've  got  a 
business  of  my  own  now.  Don't  run  away  with  any 
idea  that  I'm  against  Labour — will  you  ? " 

"Not  in  the  least.  I  can  see  that.  You  merely 
find  that  Labour's  a  little  bit — er — inconsiderate, 
sometimes?" 

"Look  what  happens  across  the  Border!  I 
suppose  they've  told  you  that  little  fuss  with  the 
Japanese  in  Vancouver  was  worked  from  down 
under,  haven't  they?  I  don't  think  our  own  people 
'ud  have  done  it  by  themselves." 

"I've  heard  that  several  times.  Is  it  quite 
sporting,  do  you  think,  to  lay  the  blame  on  another 
country?" 

"You  don't  live  here.  But  as  I  was  saying — if  we 
get  rid  of  the  Japs  to-day,  we'll  be  told  to  get  rid  of 
some  one  else  to-morrow.  There's  no  limit,  sir,  to 
what  Labour  wants.     None!" 

"I  thought  they  only  want  a  fair  day's  wage  for  a 
fair  day's  work?" 

"That  may  do  in  the  Old  Country,  but  here  they 
mean  to  boss  the  country.     They  do." 

"And  how  does  the  country  like  it?" 

"We're  about  sick  of  it.  It  don't  matter  much  in 
flush  times — employers'll  do  most  anything  sooner 
than  stop  work — but  when  we  come  to  a  pinch, 


LABOUR  181 

you'll  hear  something.  We're  a  rich  land — in  spite 
of  everything  they  make  out — but  we're  held  up  at 
every  turn  by  Labour.  Why,  there's  businesses  on 
businesses  which  friends  of  mine — in  a  small  way 
like  myself — want  to  start.  Businesses  in  every 
direction — if  they  was  only  allowed  to  start  in.  But 
they  ain't." 

"That's  a  pity.  Now,  what  do  you  think  about 
the  Japanese  question?" 

"I  don't  think.  I  know.  Both  political  parties 
are  playing  up  to  the  Labour  vote — if  you  under- 
stand what  that  means." 

I  tried  to  understand. 

"And  neither  side'll  tell  the  truth — that  if  the 
Asiatic  goes,  this  side  of  the  Continent'll  drop  out  of 
sight,  unless  we  get  free  white  immigration.  And 
any  party  that  proposed  white  immigration  on  a 
large  scale  'ud  be  snowed  under  next  election.  I'm 
telling  you  what  politicians  think.  Myself,  I  believe 
if  a  man  stood  up  to  Labour — not  that  I've  any 
feeling  against  Labour — and  just  talked  sense,  a  lot 
of  people  would  follow  him — quietly,  of  course.  I 
believe  he  could  even  get  white  immigration  after  a 
while.  He'd  lose  the-first  election,  of  course,  but  in 
the  long  run  .  .  .  We're  about  sick  of  Labour. 
I  wanted  you  to  know  the  truth." 

"Thank  you.  And  you  don't  think  any  at- 
tempt to  bring  in  white  immigration  would  suc- 
ceed ? " 


1 82  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

"Not  if  it  didn't  suit  Labour.  You  can  try  it  if 
you  like,  and  see  what  happens." 

On  that  hint  I  made  an  experiment  in  another 
city.  There  were  three  men  of  position,  and  im- 
portance, and  affluence,  each  keenly  interested  in 
the  development  of  their  land,  each  asserting  that 
what  the  land  needed  was  white  immigrants.  And 
we  four  talked  for  two  hours  on  the  matter — up  and 
down  and  in  circles.  The  one  point  on  which  those 
three  men  were  unanimous  was,  that  whatever  steps 
were  taken  to  bring  people  into  British  Columbia 
from  England,  by  private  recruiting  or  otherwise, 
should  be  taken  secretly.  Otherwise  the  business  of 
the  people  concerned  in  the  scheme  would  suffer. 

At  which  point  I  dropped  the  Great  Question  of 
Asiatic  Exclusion  which  is  Agitating  all  our  Com- 
munity; and  I  leave  it  to  you,  especially  in  Australia 
and  the  Cape,  to  draw  your  own  conclusions. 

Externally,  British  Columbia  appears  to  be  the 
richest  and  the  loveliest  section  of  the  Continent. 
Over  and  above  her  own  resources  she  has  a  fair 
chance  to  secure  an  immense  Asiatic  trade,  which 
she  urgently  desires.  Her  land,  in  many  places  over 
large  areas,  is  peculiarly  fitted  for  the  small  farmer 
and  fruit-grower,  who  can  send  his  truck  to  the 
cities.  On  every  hand  I  heard  a  demand  for  labour 
of  all  kinds.  At  the  same  time,  in  no  other  part  of 
the  Continent  did  I  meet  so  many  men  who  in- 
sistently decried  the  value  and  possibilities  of  their 


LABOUR  183 

country,  or  who  dwelt  more  fluently  on  the  hard- 
ships and  privations  to  be  endured  by  the  white 
immigrant.  I  believe  that  one  or  two  gentlemen 
have  gone  to  England  to  explain  the  drawbacks 
viva  voce.  It  is  possible  that  they  incur  a  great 
responsibility  in  the  present,  and  even  a  terrible  one 
for  the  future. 


The  Fortunate  Towns 

After  Politics,  let  us  return  to  the  Prairie  which 
is  the  High  Veldt,  plus  Hope,  Activity,  and  Reward. 
Winnipeg  is  the  door  to  it — a  great  city  in  a  great 
plain,  comparing  herself,  innocently  enough,  to 
other  cities  of  her  acquaintance,  but  quite  unlike  any 
other  city. 

When  one  meets,  in  her  own  house,  a  woman  not 
seen  since  girlhood  she  is  all  a  stranger  till  some 
remembered  tone  or  gesture  links  up  to  the  past, 
and  one  cries:  "It  is  you  after  all."  But,  indeed, 
the  child  has  gone;  the  woman  with  her  influences 
has  taken  her  place.  I  tried  vainly  to  recover  the 
gawky,  graceless  city  I  had  known,  so  unformed  and 
so  insistent  on  her  shy  self.  I  even  ventured  to 
remind  a  man  of  it.  "I  remember,"  he  said,  smiling, 
"but  we  were  young  then.  This  thing,"  indicating 
an  immense  perspective  of  asphalted  avenue  that 
dipped  under  thirty  railway  tracks,  "only  came  up 
in  the  last  ten  years — practically  the  last  five. 
We've  had  to  enlarge  all  those  warehouses  yonder 
by  adding  two  or  three  stories  to  'em,  and  we've 
hardly  begun  to  go  ahead  yet.  We're  just  begin- 
ning." 

184 


THE  FORTUNATE  TOWNS  185 

Warehouses,  railway-sidings,  and  such  are  only 
counters  in  the  White  Man's  Game,  which  can  be 
swept  up  and  re-dealt  as  the  play  varies.  It  was  the 
spirit  in  the  thin  dancing  air — the  new  spirit  of  the 
new  city — which  rejoiced  me.  Winnipeg  has  Things 
in  abundance,  but  has  learned  to  put  them  beneath 
her  feet,  not  on  top  of  her  mind,  and  so  is  older  than 
many  cities.  None  the  less  the  Things  had  to  be 
shown — for  what  shopping  is  to  the  woman  showing 
off  his  town  is  to  the  right-minded  man.  First  came 
the  suburbs — miles  on  miles  of  the  dainty,  clean- 
outlined,  wooden-built  houses,  where  one  can  be  so 
happy  and  so  warm,  each  unjealously  divided  from 
its  neighbour  by  the  lightest  of  boundaries.  One 
could  date  them  by  their  architecture,  year  after 
year,  back  to  the  Early  'Nineties,  which  is  when  civi- 
lisation began;  could  guess  within  a  few  score  dollars 
at  their  cost  and  the  incomes  of  their  owners,  and 
could  ask  questions  about  the  new  domestic  appli- 
ances of  to-day. 

"Asphalt  streets  and  concrete  sidewalks  came  up  a 
few  years  ago,"  said  our  host  as  we  trotted  over 
miles  of  it.  "We  found  it  the  only  way  to  fight 
the  prairie  mud.  Look!"  Where  the  daring  road 
ended,  there  lay  unsubdued,  level  with  the  pale 
asphalt,  the  tenacious  prairie,  over  which  civilisa- 
tion fought  her  hub-deep  way  to  the  West.  And 
with  asphalt  and  concrete  they  fight  the  prairie  back 
every  building  season.     Next  came  the  show-houses, 


1 86  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

built  by  rich  men  with  an  eye  to  the  honour  and 
glory  of  their  city,  which  is  the  first  obligation  of 
wealth  in  a  new  land. 

We  twisted  and  turned  among  broad,  clean,  tree- 
lined,  sunlit  boulevards  and  avenues,  all  sluiced 
down  with  an  air  that  forbade  any  thought  of  fa- 
tigue, and  talked  of  city  government  and  municipal 
taxation,  till,  in  a  certain  silence,  we  were  shown  a 
suburb  of  uncared-for  houses,  shops,  and  banks, 
whose  sides  and  corners  were  rubbed  greasy  by  the 
shoulders  of  loafers.  Dirt  and  tin  cans  lay  about 
the  street.  Yet  it  was  not  the  squalor  of  poverty 
so  much  as  the  lack  of  instinct  to  keep  clean.  One 
race  prefers  to  inhabit  there. 

Next  a  glimpse  of  a  cold,  white  cathedral,  red- 
brick schools  almost  as  big  (thank  goodness!)  as 
some  convents;  hospitals,  institutions,  a  mile  or  so 
of  shops,  and  then  a  most  familiar-feeling  lunch  at  a 
Club  which  would  have  amazed  my  Englishman  at 
Montreal,  where  men,  not  yet  old,  talked  of  Fort 
Garry  as  they  remembered  it,  and  tales  of  the  found- 
ing of  the  city,  of  early  administrative  shifts  and  acci- 
dents, mingled  with  the  younger  men's  prophecies 
and  frivolities. 

There  are  a  few  places  still  left  where  men  can 
handle  big  things  with  a  light  touch,  and  take  more 
for  granted  in  five  minutes  than  an  Englishman  at 
home  could  puzzle  out  in  a  year.  But  one  would  not 
meet  many  English  at  a  lunch  in   a  London  club 


THE  FORTUNATE  TOWNS  187 

who  took  the  contract  for  building  London  Wall  or 
helped  bully  King  John  into  signing  Magna  Charta. 

I  had  two  views  of  the  city — one  on  a  gray  day 
from  the  roof  of  a  monster  building,  whence  it  seemed 
to  overflow  and  fill  with  noises  the  whole  vast  cup  of 
the  horizon;  and  still,  all  round  its  edge,  jets  of 
steam  and  the  impatient  cries  of  machinery  showed 
it  was  eating  out  into  the  Prairie  like  a  smothered 
fire. 

The  other  picture  was  a  silhouette  of  the  city's 
flank,  mysterious  as  a  line  of  unexplored  cliffs,  under 
a  sky  crimson-barred  from  the  zenith  to  the  ground, 
where  it  lay,  pale  emerald  behind  the  uneven  ramparts. 
As  our  train  halted  in  the  last  of  the  dusk,  and  the 
rails  glowed  dull  red,  I  caught  the  deep  surge  of  it, 
and  seven  miles  across  the  purple  levels  saw  the  low, 
restless  aurora  of  its  lights.  It  is  rather  an  awesome 
thing  to  listen  to  a  vanguard  of  civilisation  talking  to 
itself  in  the  night  in  the  same  tone  as  a  thousand- 
year-old  city. 

All  the  country  hereabouts  is  riddled  with  railways 
for  business  and  pleasure  undreamed  of  fifteen 
years  ago,  and  it  was  a  long  time  before  we  reached 
the  clear  prairie  of  air  and  space  and  open  land.  The 
air  is  different  from  any  air  that  ever  blew;  the  space 
is  ampler  than  most  spaces,  because  it  runs  back  to 
the  unhampered  Pole,  and  the  open  land  keeps  the 
secret  of  its  magic  as  closely  as  the  sea  or  the  desert. 

People  here  do  not  stumble  against  each  other 


188  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

around  coiners,  but  see  largely  and  tranquilly  from 
a  long  way  off  what  they  desire,  or  wish  to  avoid, 
and  they  shape  their  path  accordingly  across  the 
waves,  and  troughs,  and  tongues,  and  dips  and  fans 
of  the  land. 

When  mere  space  and  the  stoop  of  the  high  sky 
begin  to  overwhelm,  earth  provides  little  ponds  and 
lakes,  lying  in  soft-flanked  hollows,  where  people 
can  step  down  out  of  the  floods  of  air,  and  delight 
themselves  with  small  and  known  distances.  Most 
of  the  women  I  saw  about  the  houses  were  down  in 
the  hollows,  and  most  of  the  men  were  on  the  crests 
and  the  flats.  Once,  while  we  halted  a  woman  drove 
straight  down  at  us  from  the  sky-line,  along  a  golden 
path  between  black  ploughed  lands.  When  the 
horse,  who  managed  affairs,  stopped  at  the  cars,  she 
nodded  mysteriously,  and  showed  us  a  very  small 
baby  in  the  hollow  of  her  arm.  Doubtless  she  was 
some  exiled  Queen  flying  North  to  found  a  dynasty 
and  establish  a  country.  The  Prairie  makes  every- 
thing wonderful. 

They  were  threshing  the  wheat  on  both  sides  of 
the  track  as  far  as  the  eye  could  see.  The  smoke  of 
the  machines  went  up  in  orderly  perspective,  along- 
side the  mounds  of  chaff — thus:  a  machine,  a  house, 
a  mound  of  chaff,  a  stretch  of  wheat  in  stooks — and 
then  repeat  the  pattern  over  the  next  few  degrees  of 
longitude.  We  ran  through  strings  of  nearly  touch- 
ing little  towns,  where  I  remembered  an  occasional 


THE  FORTUNATE  TOWNS  189 

shack;  and  through  big  towns  once  represented  by  a 
name-board,  a  siding,  and  two  troopers  of  the  North- 
West  Police.  In  those  days  men  proved  that  Wheat 
would  not  grow  north  of  some  fool's  line,  or  other, 
or,  if  it  did,  that  no  one  would  grow  it.  And  now 
the  Wheat  was  marching  with  us  as  far  as  the  eye 
could  reach;  the  railways  were  out,  two,  three  hun- 
dred miles  north,  peopling  a  new  wheat  country; 
and  north  of  that  again  the  Grand  Trunk  was  laying 
down  a  suburban  extension  of  a  few  thousand  miles 
across  the  Continent,  with  branches  perhaps  to 
Dawson  City,  certainly  to  Hudson  Bay. 

"Come  north  and  look!"  cried  the  Afrites  of  the 
Railway.  "You're  only  on  the  fringe  of  it  here." 
I  preferred  to  keep  the  old  road,  and  to  gape  at  mir- 
acles accomplished  since  my  day.  The  old,  false- 
fronted,  hollow-stomached  Western  hotels  were  gone; 
their  places  filled  by  five-story  brick  or  stone  ones, 
with  Post  Offices  to  match.  Occasionally  some  over- 
looked fragment  of  the  past  still  cleaved  to  a  town, 
and  marked  it  for  an  old  acquaintance,  but  often 
one  had  to  get  a  mile  away  and  look  back  on  a  place- 
as  one  holds  a  palimpsest  up  against  the  light — to 
identify  the  long  overlaid  lines  of  the  beginnings. 
Each  town  supplied  the  big  farming  country  behind 
it,  and  each  town  school  carried  the  Union  Jack 
on  a  flagstaff"  in  its  playground.  So  far  as  one  could 
understand,  the  scholars  are  taught  neither  to  hate, 
nor  despise,  nor  beg  from,  their  own  country. 


190  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

I  whispered  to  a  man  that  I  was  a  little  tired  of  a 
three  days'  tyranny  of  Wheat,  besides  being  shocked 
at  farmers  who  used  clean  bright  straw  for  fuel, 
and  made  bonfires  of  their  chaff-hills.  "You're  'way 
behind  the  times,"  said  he.  "There's  fruit  and  dairy- 
ing and  any  quantity  of  mixed  farming  going  for- 
ward all  around — let  alone  irrigation  further  West. 
Wheat's  not  our  only  king  by  a  long  sight.  Wait 
till  you  strike  such  and  such  a  place."  It  was  there 
I  met  a  prophet  and  a  preacher  in  the  shape  of  a 
Commissioner  of  the  Local  Board  of  Trade  (all  towns 
have  them),  who  firmly  showed  me  the  vegetables 
which  his  district  produced.  They  were  vegetables 
too — all  neatly  staged  in  a  little  kiosk  near  the 
station. 

I  think  the  pious  Thomas  Tusser  would  have 
loved  that  man.  "Providence,"  said  he,  shedding 
pamphlets  at  every  gesture,  "did  not  intend  ever- 
lasting Wheat  in  this  section.  No,  sir!  Our  busi- 
ness is  to  keep  ahead  of  Providence — to  meet  her  with 
mixed  farming.  Are  you  interested  in  mixed  farm- 
ing? Psha!  Too  bad  you  missed  our  fruit  and  vege- 
table show.  It  draws  people  together,  mixed  farm- 
ing does.  I  don't  say  Wheat  is  narrowing  to  the 
outlook,  but  I  claim  there's  more  sociability  and 
money  in  mixed  farming.  We've  been  hypnotized 
by  Wheat  and  Cattle.  Now — the  cars  won't  start 
yet  awhile — I'll  just  tell  you  my  ideas." 

For  fifteen  glorious  minutes  he  gave  me  condensed 


THE  FORTUNATE  TOWNS  191 

essence  of  mixed  farming,  with  excursions  into  sugar- 
beet  (did  you  know  they  are  making  sugar  in  Al- 
berta?), and  he  talked  of  farmyard  muck,  our  dark 
mother  of  all  things,  with  proper  devotion. 

"What  we  want  now,"  he  cried  in  farewell,  "is 
men — more  men.     Yes,  and  women." 

They  need  women  sorely  for  domestic  help,  to 
meet  the  mad  rush  of  work  at  harvest  time — maids 
who  will  help  in  house,  dairy,  and  chicken-run 
till  they  are  married. 

A  steady  tide  sets  that  way  already;  one  contented 
settler  recruiting  others  from  England;  but  if  a  tenth 
of  that  energy  wasted  on  "social  reform"  could  be 
diverted  to  decently  thought  out  and  supervised 
emigration  work  ("Labour"  does  not  yet  object  to 
people  working  on  the  land)  we  might  do  something 
worth  talking  about.  The  races  which  work  and  do 
not  form  Committees  are  going  into  the  country  at 
least  as  fast  as  ours.  It  makes  one  jealous  and  afraid 
to  watch  aliens  taking,  and  taking  honestly,  so  much 
of  this  treasure  of  good  fortune  and  sane  living. 

There  was  a  town  down  the  road  which  I  had 
first  heard  discussed  nigh  twenty  years  ago  by  a 
broken-down  prospector  in  a  box-car.  'Young 
feller,"  said  he,  after  he  had  made  a  professional 
prophecy,  "you'll  hear  of  that  town  if  you  live. 
She's  born  lucky." 

I  saw  the  town  later — it  was  a  siding  by  a  trestle 
bridge  where  Indians  sold  beadwork — and  as  years 


192  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

passed  I  gathered  that  the  old  tramp's  prophecy 
had  come  true,  and  that  Luck  of  some  kind  had 
struck  the  little  town  by  the  big  river.  So,  this  trip, 
I  stopped  to  make  sure.  It  was  a  beautiful  town  of 
six  thousand  people,  and  a  railway  junction,  beside  a 
high-girdered  iron  bridge;  there  was  a  public  garden 
with  trees  at  the  station.  A  company  of  joyous  men 
and  women,  whom  that  air  and  that  light,  and  their 
own  goodwill,  made  our  brothers  and  sisters,  came 
along  in  motors,  and  gave  us  such  a  day  as  never  was. 

"What  about  the  Luck?"  I  asked. 

"Heavens!"  said  one.  "Haven't  you  heard  about 
our  natural  gas — the  greatest  natural  gas  in  the 
world?     Oh,  come  and  see!" 

I  was  whirled  off  to  a  roundhouse  full  of  engines 
and  machinery-shops,  worked  by  natural  gas  which 
comes  out  of  the  earth,  smelling  slightly  of  fried 
onions,  at  a  pressure  of  six  hundred  pounds,  and  by 
valves  and  taps  is  reduced  to  four  pounds.  There 
was  Luck  enough  to  make  a  metropolis.  Imagine 
a  city's  heating  and  light — to  say  nothing  of  power — 
laid  on  at  no  greater  expense  than  that  of  piping! 

"Are  there  any  limits  to  the  possibilities  of  it?" 
I  demanded. 

"Who  knows?  We're  only  at  the  beginning. 
We'll  show  you  a  brick-making  plant,  out  on  the 
prairie,  run  by  gas.  But  just  now  we  want  to  show 
you  one  of  our  pet  farms." 

Away   swooped   the   motors,   like   swallows,   over 


THE  FORTUNATE  TOWNS  193 

roads  any  width  you  please,  and  up  on  to  what 
looked  like  the  High  Veldt  itself.  A  Major  of  the 
Mounted  Police,  who  had  done  a  year  at  the  Boer 
war,  told  us  how  the  ostrich-farm  fencing  and  the  lit- 
tle meercats  sitting  up  and  racing  about  South  Africa 
had  made  him  homesick  for  the  sight  of  the  gophers 
by  the  wayside,  and  the  endless  panels  of  wire  fencing 
along  which  we  rushed.  (The  Prairie  has  nothing 
to  learn  from  the  Veldt  about  fencing,  or  tricky 
gates.) 

"After  all,"  said  the  Major,  "there's  no  country 
to  touch  this.  I've  had  thirty  years  of  it — from 
one  end  to  the  other." 

Then  they  pointed  out  all  the  quarters  of  the 
horizon — say,  fifty  miles  wherever  you  turned — 
and  gave  them  names. 

The  show  farmer  had  taken  his  folk  to  church, 
but  we  friendly  slipped  through  his  gates  and  reached 
the  silent,  spick-and-span  house,  with  its  trim  barn, 
and  a  vast  mound  of  copper-coloured  wheat,  piled 
in  the  sun  between  two  mounds  of  golden  chaff*. 
Every  one  thumbed  a  sample  of  it  and  passed  judg- 
ment— it  must  have  been  worth  a  few  hundred  golden 
sovereigns  as  it  lay,  out  on  the  veldt — and  we  sat 
around,  on  the  farm  machinery,  and,  in  the  hush 
that  a  shut-up  house  always  imposes,  we  seemed  to 
hear  the  lavish  earth  getting  ready  for  new  harvests. 
There  was  no  true  wind,  but  a  push,  as  it  were,  of  the 
whole  crystal  atmosphere. 


i94  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

"Now  for  the  brickfield!"  they  cried.  It  was 
many  miles  off.  The  road  led  by  a  never-to-be- 
forgotten  drop,  to  a  river  broad  as  the  Orange  at 
Norval's  Pont,  rustling  between  mud  hills.  An  old 
Scotchman,  in  the  very  likeness  of  Charon,  with 
big  hip  boots,  controlled  a  pontoon,  which  sagged 
back  and  forth  by  current  on  a  wire  rope.  The 
reckless  motors  bumped  on  to  this  ferry  through  a 
foot  of  water,  and  Charon,  who  never  relaxed,  bore 
us  statelily  across  the  dark,  broad  river  to  the  further 
bank,  where  we  all  turned  to  look  at  the  lucky  little 
town,  and  discuss  its  possibilities. 

"I  think  you  can  see  it  best  from  here,"  said 
one. 

"No,  from  here,"  said  another,  and  their  voices 
softened  on  the  very  name  of  it. 

Then  for  an  hour  we  raced  over  true  prairie,  great 
yellow-green  plains  crossed  by  old  buffalo  trails, 
which  do  not  improve  motor  springs,  till  a  single 
chimney  broke  the  horizon  like  a  mast  at  sea;  and 
thereby  were  more  light-hearted  men  and  women,  a 
shed  and  a  tent  or  two  for  workmen,  the  ribs  and 
frames  of  the  brick-making  mechanism,  a  fifteen 
foot  square  shaft  sunk,  sixty  foot  down  to  the  clay, 
and,  stark  and  black,  the  pipe  of  a  natural-gas  well. 
The  rest  was  Prairie — the  mere  curve  of  the  earth — 
with  little  gray  birds  calling. 

I  thought  it  could  not  have  been  simpler,  more 
audacious  or  more  impressive,  till  I  saw  some  women 


THE  FORTUNATE  TOWNS  195 

in  pretty  frocks  go  up  and  peer  at  the  hissing  gas- 
valves. 

"We  fancied  that  it  might  amuse  you,"  said 
all  those  merry  people,  and  between  laughter  and 
digressions  they  talked  over  projects  for  building, 
first  their  own,  and  next  other  cities,  in  brick  of 
all  sorts;  giving  figures  of  output  and  expenses 
of  plant  that  made  one  gasp.  To  the  eye  the  affair 
was  no  more  than  a  novel  or  delicious  picnic.  What 
it  actually  meant  was  a  committee  to  change  the 
material  of  civilisation  for  a  hundred  miles  around. 
I  felt  as  though  I  were  assisting  at  the  planning  of 
Nineveh;  and  whatever  of  good  comes  to  the  little 
town  that  was  born  lucky  I  shall  always  claim  a 
share. 

But  there  is  no  space  to  tell  how  we  fed,  with 
a  prairie  appetite,  in  the  men's  quarters,  on  a  meal 
prepared  by  an  artist;  how  we  raced  home  at  speeds 
no  child  could  ever  hear  of,  and  no  grown-up  should 
attempt;  how  the  motors  squattered  at  the  ford,  and 
took  pot-shots  at  the  pontoon  till  even  Charon  smiled; 
how  great  horses  hauled  the  motors  up  the  gravelly 
bank  into  the  town;  how  there  we  met  people  in  their 
Sunday  best,  walking  and  driving,  and  pulled  our- 
selves together,  and  looked  virtuous;  and  how  the 
merry  company  suddenly  and  quietly  evanished  be- 
cause they  thought  that  their  guests  might  be  tired. 
I  can  give  you  no  notion  of  the  pure,  irresponsible 
frolic  of  it — of  the  almost  affectionate  kindness,  the 


196  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

gay  and  inventive  hospitality  that  so  delicately  con- 
trolled the  whole  affair — any  more  than  I  can  describe 
a  certain  quiet  half-hour  in  the  dusk  just  before  we 
left,  when  the  company  gathered  to  say  good-bye, 
while  young  couples  walked  in  the  street,  and  the 
glare  of  the  never-extinguished  natural-gas  lamps 
coloured  the  leaves  of  the  trees  a  stage  green. 

It  was   a  woman,  speaking  out  of  the  shadow, 
who  said,  what  we  all  felt,  "You  see,  we  just  love 


our  town." 


"So  do  we,"  I  said,  and  it  slid  behind  us. 


Mountains  and  the  Pacific 

The  Prairie  proper  ends  at  Calgary,  among  the 
cattle-ranches,  mills,  breweries,  and  three  million 
acre  irrigation  works.  The  river  that  floats  timber 
to  the  town  from  the  mountains  does  not  slide  nor 
rustle  like  Prairie  rivers,  but  brawls  across  bars  of 
blue  pebbles,  and  a  greenish  tinge  in  its  water  hints 
of  the  snows. 

What  I  saw  of  Calgary  was  crowded  into  one  lively 
half-hour  (motors  were  invented  to  run  about  new 
cities).  What  I  heard  I  picked  up,  oddly  enough, 
weeks  later,  from  a  young  Dane  in  the  North  Sea. 
He  was  qualmish,  but  his  saga  of  triumph  upheld  him. 

"Three  years  ago  I  come  to  Canada  by  steerage 
— third  class.  And  I  have  the  language  to  learn. 
Look  at  me!  I  have  now  my  own  dairy  business 
in  Calgary,  and — look  at  me! — my  own  half  section, 
that  is,  three  hundred  and  twenty  acres.  All  my 
land  which  is  mine!  And  now  I  come  home,  first 
class,  for  Christmas  here  in  Denmark,  and  I  shall 
take  out  back  with  me,  some  friends  of  mine  which 
are  farmers,  to  farm  on  those  irrigated  lands  near 
by  Calgary.  Oh,  I  tell  you  there  is  nothing  wrong 
with  Canada  for  a  man  which  works.'' 

197 


i98  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

"And  will  your  friends  go?"  I  inquired. 

"You  bet  they  will.  It  is  all  arranged  already. 
I  bet  they  get  ready  to  go  now  already;  and  in 
three  years  they  will  come  back  for  Christmas  here 
in  Denmark,  first  class  like  me." 

"Then  you  think  Calgary  is  going  ahead  ?': 

"You  bet !  We  are  only  at  the  beginning  of  things. 
Look  at  me!  Chickens?  I  raise  chickens  also  in 
Calgary,"  etc.,  etc. 

After  all  this  pageant  of  unrelieved  material 
prosperity,  it  was  a  rest  to  get  to  the  stillness  of  the 
big  foothills,  though  they,  too,  had  been  inspanned 
for  the  work  of  civilisation.  The  timber  off  their 
sides  was  ducking  and  pitch-poling  down  their  swift 
streams,  to  be  sawn  into  house-stuff  for  all  the 
world.  The  woodwork  of  a  purely  English  villa 
may  come  from  as  many  Imperial  sources  as  its 
owner's  income. 

The  train  crept,  whistling  to  keep  its  heart  up, 
through  the  winding  gateways  of  the  hills,  till  it 
presented  itself,  very  humbly,  before  the  true  moun- 
tains, the  not  so  Little  Brothers  to  the  Himalayas. 
Mountains  of  the  pine-cloaked,  snow-capped  breed 
are  unchristian  things. 

Men  mine  into  the  flanks  of  some  of  them,  and 
trust  to  modern  science  to  pull  them  through.  Not 
long  ago,  a  mountain  kneeled  on  a  little  mining  vil- 
lage as  an  angry  elephant  kneels;  but  it  did  not  get 
up  again,  and  the  half  of  that  camp  was  no  more  seen 


MOUNTAINS  AND  THE  PACIFIC      199 

on  earth.  The  other  half  still  stands — uninhabited. 
The  "heathen  in  his  blindness"  would  have  made 
arrangements  with  the  Genius  of  the  Place  before  he 
ever  drove  a  pick  there.  As  a  learned  scholar  of  a 
little-known  university  once  observed  to  an  engineer 
officer  on  the  Himalaya-Tibet  Road — "You  white 
men  gain  nothing  by  not  noticing  what  you  cannot 
see.  You  fall  off  the  road,  or  the  road  falls  on  you, 
and  you  die,  and  you  think  it  all  an  accident.  How 
much  wiser  it  was  when  we  were  allowed  to  sacrifice 
a  man  officially,  sir,  before  making  bridges  or  other 
public  works.  Then  the  local  gods  were  officially 
recognized,  sir,  and  did  not  give  any  more  trouble, 
and  the  local  workmen,  sir,  were  much  pleased  with 
these  precautions." 

There  are  many  local  gods  on  the  road  through 
the  Rockies:  old  bold  mountains  that  have  parted 
with  every  shred  of  verdure  and  stand  wrapped 
in  sheets  of  wrinkled  silver  rock,  over  which  the 
sight  travels  slowly  as  in  delirium;  mad,  horned 
mountains,  wreathed  with  dancing  mists;  low- 
browed and  bent-shouldered  faquirs  of  the  wayside, 
sitting  in  meditation  beneath  a  burden  of  glacier- 
ice  that  thickens  every  year;  and  mountains  of  fair 
aspect  on  one  side,  but  on  the  other  seamed  with 
hollow  sunless  clefts,  where  last  year's  snow  is  black- 
ened with  this  year's  dirt  and  smoke  of  forest-fires. 
The  drip  from  it  seeps  away  through  slopes  of  un- 
stable gravel  and  dirt,  till,  at  the  appointed  season, 


2oo  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

the  whole  half-mile  of  undermined  talus  slips  and 
roars  into  the  horrified  valley. 

The  railway  winds  in  and  out  among  them  with 
little  inexplicable  deviations  and  side-twists,  much 
as  a  buck  walks  through  a  forest-glade,  sidling  and 
crossing  uneasily  in  what  appears  to  be  a  plain 
path.  Only  when  the  track  has  rounded  another 
shoulder  or  two,  a  backward  and  upward  glance  at 
some  menacing  slope,  shows  why  the  train  did  not 
take  the  easier-looking  road  on  the  other  side  of  the 
gorge. 

From  time  to  time  the  mountains  lean  apart, 
and  nurse  between  them  some  golden  valley  of 
slow  streams,  fat  pastures,  and  park-like  uplands, 
with  a  little  town  and  cow  bells  tinkling  among 
berry  bushes;  and  children  who  have  never  seen 
the  sun  rise  or  set,  shouting  at  the  trains;  and  real 
gardens  round  the  houses. 

At  Calgary  it  was  a  frost,  and  the  dahlias  were 
dead.  A  day  later  nasturtiums  bloomed  untouched 
beside  the  station  platforms,  and  the  air  was  heavy 
and  liquid  with  the  breath  of  the  Pacific.  One 
felt  the  spirit  of  the  land  change  with  the  changing 
outline  of  the  hills  till,  on  the  lower  levels  by  the 
Fraser,  it  seemed  that  even  the  Sussex  Downs  must 
be  nearer  at  heart  to  the  Prairie  than  British  Colum- 
bia. The  Prairie  people  notice  the  difference,  and 
the  Hill  people,  unwisely,  I  think,  insist  on  it.  Per- 
haps the  magic  may  lie  in  the  scent  of  strange  ever- 


MOUNTAINS  AND  THE  PACIFIC     201 

r 

greens  and  mosses  not  known  outside  the  ranges: 
or  it  may  strike  from  wall  to  wall  of  timeless  rifts  and 
gorges,  but  it  seemed  to  me  to  draw  out  of  the  great 
sea  that  washes  further  Asia — the  Asia  of  allied 
mountains,  mines,  and  forests. 

We  rested  one  day  high  up  in  the  Rockies,  to  visit 
a  lake  carved  out  of  pure  jade,  whose  property  is  to 
colour  every  reflection  on  its  bosom  to  its  own  tint. 
A  belt  of  brown  dead  timber  on  a  gravel  scar,  showed, 
upside  dowTn,  like  sombre  cypresses  rising  from  green 
turf  and  the  reflected  snows  were  pale  green.  In 
summer  many  tourists  go  there,  but  we  saw  nothing 
except  the  wonder-working  lake  lying  mute  in  its 
circle  of  forest,  where  red  and  orange  lichens  grew 
among  gray  and  blue  moss,  and  we  heard  nothing 
except  the  noise  of  its  outfall  hurrying  through  a  jam 
of  bone-white  logs.  The  thing  might  have  belonged 
to  Tibet  or  some  unexplored  valley  behind  Kin- 
chinjunga.     It  had  no  concern  with  the  West. 

As  we  drove  along  the  narrow  hill  road  a  piebald 
pack-pony  with  a  china-blue  eye  came  round  a  bend, 
followed  by  two  women,  black-haired,  bare-headed, 
wearing  beadwork  squaw-jackets,  and  riding  straddle. 
A  string  of  pack-ponies  trotted  through  the  pines 
behind  them. 

"Indians  on  the  move?"  said  I.  "How  charac- 
teristic!" 

As  the  women  jolted  by,  one  of  them  very  slightly 
turned  her  eyes,  and  they  were,  past  any  doubt,  the 


202  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

comprehending  equal  eyes  of  the  civilised  white 
women  which  moved  in  that  berry-brown  face. 

"Yes,"  said  our  driver,  when  the  cavalcade  had 
navigated  the  next  curve,  "that'll  be  Mrs.  So-and- 
So  and  Miss  So-and-So.  They  mostly  camp  here- 
about for  three  months  every  year.  I  reckon  they're 
coming  in  to  the  railroad  before  the  snow  falls." 

"And  whereabout  do  they  go?"  I  asked. 

"Oh,  all  about  anywheres.  If  you  mean  where 
they  come  from  just  now — that's  the  trail  yonder." 

He  pointed  to  a  hair-crack  across  the  face  of  a 
mountain,  and  I  took  his  word  for  it  that  it  was 
a  safe  pony-trail.  The  same  evening,  at  an  hotel 
of  all  the  luxuries,  a  slight  woman  in  a  very  pretty 
evening  frock  was  turning  over  photographs,  and 
the  eyes  beneath  the  strictly  arranged  hair  were 
the  eyes  of  the  woman  in  the  beadwork  jacket 
who  had  quirted  the  piebald  pack-pony  past  our 
buggy. 

Praised  be  Allah  for  the  diversity  of  His  creatures! 
But  do  you  know  any  other  country  where  two  wo- 
men could  go  out  for  a  three  months'  trek  and  shoot 
in  perfect  comfort  and  safety? 

These  mountains  are  only  ten  days  from  London, 
and  people  more  and  more  use  them  for  pleasure- 
grounds.  Other  and  most  unthought-of  persons 
buy  little  fruit-farms  in  British  Columbia  as  an  excuse 
for  a  yearly  visit  to  the  beautiful  land,  and  they 
tempt    yet    more    people    from    England.     This   is 


MOUNTAINS  AND  THE  PACIFIC     203 

apart  from  the  regular  tide  of  emigration,  and  serves 
to  make  the  land  known.  If  you  asked  a  State- 
owned  railway  to  gamble  on  the  chance  of  drawing 
tourists,  the  Commissioner  of  Railways  would  prove 
to  you  that  the  experiment  could  never  succeed,  and 
that  it  was  wrong  to  risk  the  taxpayers'  money  in 
erecting  first-class  hotels.  Yet  South  Africa  could, 
even  now,  be  made  a  tourists'  places — if  only  the  rail- 
roads and  steamship  lines  had  faith. 

On  thinking  things  over  I  suspect  I  was  not  in- 
tended to  appreciate  the  merits  of  British  Columbia 
too  highly.  Maybe  I  misjudged;  maybe  she  was 
purposely  misrepresented;  but  I  seemed  to  hear 
more  about  "problems"  and  "crises"  and  "situa- 
tions" in  her  borders  than  anywhere  else.  So  far 
as  eye  or  ear  could  gather,  the  one  urgent  problem 
was  to  find  enough  men  and  women  to  do  the  work 
in  hand. 

Lumber,  coal,  minerals,  fisheries,  fit  soil  for  fruit, 
dairy,  and  poultry  farms  are  all  there  in  a  superb 
climate.  The  natural  beauty  of  earth  and  sky  match 
these  lavish  gifts;  to  which  are  added  thousands  of 
miles  of  safe  and  sheltered  waterways  for  coastal 
trade;  deep  harbours  that  need  no  dredge;  the 
ground-works  of  immense  and  ice-free  ports — all  the 
title-deeds  to  half  the  trade  of  Asia.  For  the  people's 
pleasure  and  good  disport  salmon,  trout,  quail,  and 
pheasant  play  in  front  of  and  through  the  suburbs 
of  her  capitals.     A  little  axe-work  and  road-metalling 


204  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

gives  a  city  one  of  the  loveliest  water-girt  parks 
that  we  have  outside  the  tropics.  Another  town 
is  presented  with  a  hundred  islands,  knolls,  wooded 
coves,  stretches  of  beach,  and  dingles,  laid  down  as 
expressly  for  camp-life,  picnics,  and  boating  parties, 
beneath  skies  never  too  hot  and  rarely  too  cold. 
If  they  care  to  lift  up  their  eyes  from  their  almost 
subtropical  gardens  they  can  behold  snowy  peaks 
across  blue  bays,  which  must  be  good  for  the  soul. 
Though  they  face  a  sea  out  of  which  any  portent 
may  arise,  they  are  not  forced  to  protect  or  even  to 
police  its  waters.  They  are  as  ignorant  of  drouth, 
murrain,  pestilence  locusts,  and  blight,  as  they  are 
of  the  true  meaning  of  want  and  fear. 

Such  a  land  is  good  for  an  energetic  man.  It 
is  also  not  so  bad  for  the  loafer.  I  was,  as  I  have 
told  you,  instructed  on  its  drawbacks.  I  was  to 
understand  that  there  was  no  certainty  in  any  em- 
ployment; and  that  a  man  who  earned  immense 
wages  for  six  months  of  the  year  would  have  to  be 
kept  by  the  community  if  he  fell  out  of  work  for  the 
other  six.  I  was  not  to  be  deceived  by  golden  pic- 
tures set  before  me  by  interested  parties  (that  is  to 
say,  by  almost  every  one  I  met),  and  I  was  to  give 
due  weight  to  the  difficulties  and  discouragements 
that  beset  the  intending  immigrant.  Were  I  an 
intending  immigrant  I  would  risk  a  good  deal  of  dis- 
comfort to  get  on  to  the  land  in  British  Columbia; 
and  were  I  rich,  with  no  attachments  outside  Eng- 


MOUNTAINS  AND  THE  PACIFIC     205 

land,  I  would  swiftly  buy  me  a  farm  or  a  house  in 
that  country  for  the  mere  joy  of  it. 

I  forgot  those  doleful  and  unhumorous  conspir- 
ators among  people  who  fervently  believed  in  the 
place;  but  afterwards  the  memory  left  a  bad  taste  in 
my  mouth.  Cities,  like  women,  cannot  be  too  care- 
ful what  sort  of  men  they  allow  to  talk  about  them. 

Time  had  changed  Vancouver  literally  out  of  all 
knowledge.  From  the  station  to  the  suburbs,  and 
back  to  the  wharves,  every  step  was  strange,  and 
where  I  remembered  open  spaces  and  still  untouched 
timber,  the  tramcars  were  fleeting  people  out  to  a 
lacrosse  game.  Vancouver  is  an  aged  city,  for  only  a 
few  days  previous  to  my  arrival  the  Vancouver  Baby 
— i.  e.,  the  first  child  born  in  Vancouver — had  been 
married. 

A  steamer — once  familiar  in  Table  Bay — had 
landed  a  few  hundred  Sikhs  and  Punjabi  jats — to 
each  man  his  bundle — and  the  little  groups  walked 
uneasy  alone,  keeping,  for  many  of  them  had  been 
soldiers,  to  the  military  step.  Yes,  they  said  they 
had  come  to  this  country  to  get  work.  News  had 
reached  their  villages  that  work  at  great  wages  was 
to  be  had  in  this  country.  Their  brethren  who  had 
gone  before  had  sent  them  the  news.  Yes,  and  some- 
times the  money  for  the  passage  out.  The  money 
would  be  paid  back  from  the  so-great  wages  to  come. 
With  interest?  Assuredly  with  interest.  Did  men 
lend  money  for  nothing  in  any  country?     They  were 


206  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

waiting  for  their  brethren  to  come  and  show  them 
where  to  eat,  and  later,  how  to  work.  Meanwhile 
this  was  a  new  country.  How  could  they  say  any- 
thing about  it?  No,  it  was  not  like  Gurgaon  or 
Shahpur  or  Jullundur.  The  Sickness  (plague)  had 
come  to  all  these  places.  It  had  come  into  the  Pun- 
jab by  every  road,  and  many — many — many  had 
died.  The  crops,  too,  had  failed  in  some  districts. 
Hearing  the  news  about  these  so-great  wages  they 
had  taken  ship  for  the  belly's  sake — for  the  money's 
sake — for  the  children's  sake. 

"Would  they  go  back  again?" 

They  grinned  as  they  nudged  each  other.  The 
Sahib  had  not  quite  understood.  They  had  come 
over  for  the  sake  of  the  money — the  rupees,  no,  the 
dollars.  The  Punjab  was  their  home  where  their 
villages  lay,  where  their  people  were  waiting.  With- 
out doubt— without  doubt — they  would  go  back. 
Then  came  the  brethren  already  working  in  the  mills 
— cosmopolitans  dressed  in  ready-made  clothes,  and 
smoking  cigarettes. 

"This  way,  O  you  people,"  they  cried.  The 
bundles  were  reshouldered  and  the  turbaned  knots 
melted  away.  The  last  words  I  caught  were  true 
Sikh  talk:  "But  what  about  the  money,  O  my 
brother?" 

Some  Punjabis  have  found  out  that  money  can  be 
too  dearly  bought. 

There  was  a  Sikh  in  a  sawmill,  had  been  driver 


MOUNTAINS  AND  THE  PACIFIC     207 

in  a  mountain  battery  at  home.  Himself  he  was 
from  Amritsar.  (Oh,  pleasant  as  cold  water  in 
a  thirsty  land  is  the  sound  of  a  familiar  name  in  a 
fair  country!) 

"But  you  had  your  pension.  Why  did  you  come 
here?" 

"Heaven-born,  because  my  sense  was  little. 
And  there  was  also  the  Sickness  at  Amritsar." 

(The  historian  a  hundred  years  hence  will  be 
able  to  write  a  book  on  economic  changes  brought 
about  by  pestilence.  There  is  a  very  interesting 
study  somewhere  of  the  social  and  commercial 
effects  of  the  Black  Death  in  England.) 

In  a  wharf,  waiting  for  a  steamer,  some  thirty 
Sikhs,  many  of  them  wearing  their  old  uniforms 
(which  should  not  be  allowed)  were  talking  at  the 
tops  of  their  voices,  so  that  the  shed  rang  like  an 
Indian  railway  station.  A  suggestion  that  if  they 
spoke  lower  life  would  be  easier  was  instantly 
adopted.  Then  a  senior  officer  with  a  British  India 
medal  asked  hopefully:  "Has  the  Sahib  any  orders 
where  we  are  to  go?" 

Alas  he  had  none — nothing  but  goodwill  and 
greetings  for  the  sons  of  the  Khalsa,  and  they 
tramped  off  in  fours. 

It  is  said  that  when  the  little  riot  broke  out  in 
Vancouver  these  "heathen"  were  invited  by  other 
Asiatics  to  join  in  defending  themselves  against 
the  white  man.     They  refused  on  the  ground  that 


208  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

they  were  subjects  of  the  King.  I  wonder  what  tales 
they  sent  back  to  their  villages,  and  where,  and 
how  fully,  every  detail  of  the  affair  was  talked  over. 
White  men  forget  that  no  part  of  the  Empire  can  live 
or  die  to  itself. 

Here  is  a  rather  comic  illustration  of  this  on 
the  material  side.  The  wonderful  waters  between 
Vancouver  and  Victoria  are  full  of  whales,  leaping 
and  rejoicing  in  the  strong  blue  all  about  the  steamer. 
There  is,  therefore,  a  whalery  on  an  island  near  by, 
and  I  had  the  luck  to  travel  with  one  of  the  share- 
holders. 

"Whales  are  beautiful  beasts,"  he  said  affec- 
tionately. "We've  a  contract  with  a  Scotch  firm 
for  every  barrel  of  oil  we  can  deliver  for  years  ahead. 
It's  reckoned  the  best  for  harness-dressing." 

He  went  on  to  tell  me  how  a  swift  ship  goes  hunt- 
ing whales  with  a  bomb-gun  and  explodes  shells  into 
their  insides  so  that  they  perish  at  once. 

"All  the  old  harpoon  and  boat  business  would 
take  till  the  cows  come  home.  We  kill  'em  right 
off." 

"And  how  d'you  strip  'em?" 

It  seemed  that  the  expeditious  ship  carried  also 
a  large  air-pump,  and  pumped  up  the  carcass  to 
float  roundly  till  she  could  attend  to  it.  At  the 
end  of  her  day's  kill  she  would  return,  towing  some- 
times as  many  as  four  inflated  whales  to  the  whalery, 
which  is  a  factory  full  of  modern  appliances.     The 


MOUNTAINS  AND  THE  PACIFIC     209 

whales  are  hauled  up  inclined  planes  like  logs  to  a 
sawmill,  and  as  much  of  them  as  will  not  make  oil 
for  the  Scotch  leather-dresser,  or  cannot  be  dried 
for  the  Japanese  market,  is  converted  into  potent 
manure. 

"No  manure  can  touch  ours,"  said  the  share- 
holder. "It's  so  rich  in  bone,  d'you  see.  The 
only  thing  that  has  beat  us  up  to  date  is  their  hides; 
but  we've  fixed  up  a  patent  process  now  for  turning 
'em  into  floorcloth.  Yes,  they're  beautiful  beasts. 
That  fellow,"  he  pointed  to  a  black  hump  in  a  wreath 
of  spray,  "would  cut  up  a  miracle." 

"If  you  go  on  like  this  you  won't  have  any  whales 
left,"  I  said. 

"That  is  so.  But  the  concern  pays  30  per  cent., 
and — a  few  years  back,  no  one  believed  in  it." 

I  forgave  him  everything  for  the  last  sentence. 


A  Conclusion 

Canada  possesses  two  pillars  of  Strength  and  Beauty 
in  Quebec  and  Victoria.  The  former  ranks  by  her- 
self among  those  Mother-cities  of  whom  none  can  say 
"This  reminds  me."  To  realize  Victoria  you  must 
take  all  that  the  eye  admires  most  in  Bournemouth, 
Torquay,  the  Isle  of  Wight,  the  Happy  Valley  at 
Hongkong,  the  Doon,  Sorrento,  and  Camps  Bay; 
add  reminiscences  of  the  Thousand  Islands,  and 
arrange  the  whole  round  the  Bay  of  Naples,  with 
some  Himalayas  for  the  background. 

Real  estate  agents  recommend  it  as  a  little  piece 
of  England — the  island  on  which  it  stands  is  about 
the  size  of  Great  Britain — but  no  England  is  set  in 
any  such  seas  or  so  fully  charged  with  the  mystery  of 
the  larger  ocean  beyond.  The  high,  still  twilights 
along  the  beaches  are  out  of  the  old  East  just  under 
the  curve  of  the  world,  and  even  in  October  the  sun 
rises  warm  from  the  first.  Earth,  sky,  and  water 
wait  outside  every  man's  door  to  drag  him  out 
to  play  if  he  looks  up  from  his  work;  and,  though 
some  other  cities  in  the  Dominion  do  not  quite  under- 
stand this  immoral  mood  of  Nature,  men  who  have 
made  their  money  in  them  go  ofF  to  Victoria,  and 

2IO 


A  CONCLUSION  211 

with  the  zeal  of  converts  preach  and  preserve  its 
beauties. 

We  went  to  look  at  a  marine  junk-store  which 
had  once  been  Esquimalt,  a  station  of  the  British 
Navy.  It  was  reached  through  winding  roads, 
lovelier  than  English  lanes,  along  watersides  and 
parkways  any  one  of  which  would  have  made  the 
fortune  of  a  town. 

"Most  cities,"  a  man  said,  suddenly,  "lay  out 
their  roads  at  right  angles.  We  do  in  the  business 
quarters.     What  d'you  think?" 

"I  fancy  some  of  those  big  cities  will  have  to 
spend  millions  on  curved  roads  some  day  for  the 
sake  of  a  change,"  I  said.  "You've  got  what  no 
money  can  buy." 

"That's  what  the  men  tell  us  who  come  to  live 
in  Victoria.     And  they've  had  experience." 

It  is  pleasant  to  think  of  the  Western  million- 
aire, hot  from  some  gridiron  of  rectangular  civilisa- 
tion, confirming  good  Victorians  in  the  policy  of 
changing  vistas  and  restful  curves. 

There  is  a  view,  when  the  morning  mists  peel 
off  the  harbour  where  the  steamers  tie  up,  of  the 
Houses  of  Parliament  on  one  hand,  and  a  huge 
hotel  on  the  other,  which  as  an  example  of  cun- 
ningly fitted-in  water-fronts  and  facades  is  worth  a 
very  long  journey.  The  hotel  was  just  being  finished. 
The  ladies'  drawing-room,  perhaps  a  hundred  feet 
by  forty,  carried  an  arched  and  superbly  enriched 


212  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

plaster  ceiling  of  knops  and  arabesques  and  inter- 
lacings,  which  somehow  seemed  familiar. 

"We  saw  a  photo  of  it  in  Country  Life,"  the 
contractor  explained.  "It  seemed  just  what  the 
room  needed,  so  one  of  our  plasterers,  a  French- 
man— that's  him — took  and  copied  it.  It  comes 
in  all  right,  doesn't  it?" 

About  the  time  the  noble  original  was  put  up 
in  England  Drake  might  have  been  sailing  some- 
where off  this  very  coast.  So,  you  see,  Victoria 
lawfully  holds  the  copyright. 

I  tried  honestly  to  render  something  of  the  colour, 
the  gaiety,  and  the  graciousness  of  the  town  and  the 
island,  but  only  found  myself  piling  up  unbelievable 
adjectives,  and  so  let  it  go  with  a  hundred  other  won- 
ders and  repented  that  I  had  wasted  my  time  and 
yours  on  the  anxious-eyed  gentlemen  who  talked  of 
"  drawbacks."  A  verse  cut  out  of  a  newspaper  seems 
to  sum  up  their  attitude: 

As  the  Land  of  Little  Leisure 
Is  the  place  where  things  are  done, 
So  the  Land  of  Scanty  Pleasure 
Is  the  place  for  lots  of  fun. 
In  the  Land  of  Plenty  Trouble 
People  laugh  and  people  should, 
But  there's  some  one  always  kicking 
In  the  Land  of  Heap  Too  Good! 

At  every  step  of  my  journey  people  assured  me 
that  I  had  seen  nothing  of  Canada.     Silent  mining 


A  CONCLUSION  213 

men  from  the  North;  fruit-farmers  from  the  Okan- 
agan  Valley;  foremen  of  railway  gangs,  not  so  long 
from  English  public  schools;  the  oldest  inhabitant 
of  the  town  of  Villeneuve,  aged  twenty-eight;  cer- 
tain English  who  lived  on  the  prairie  and  contrived 
to  get  fun  and  good  fellowship  as  well  as  money; 
the  single-minded  wheat-growers  and  cattle-men; 
election  agents;  police  troopers  expansive  in  the  dusk 
of  wayside  halts;  officials  dependent  on  the  popular 
will,  who  talked  as  delicately  as  they  walked;  and 
queer  souls  who  did  not  speak  English,  and  said  so 
loudly  in  the  dining-car — each,  in  his  or  her  own  way, 
gave  me  to  understand  this.  My  excursion  bore  the 
same  relation  to  their  country  as  a  'bus-ride  down 
the  Strand  bears  to  London,  so  I  knew  how  they 
felt. 

The  excuse  is  that  our  own  flesh  and  blood  are 
more  interesting  than  anybody  else,  and  I  held 
by  birth  the  same  right  in  them  and  their  lives 
as  they  held  in  any  other  part  of  the  Empire.  Be- 
cause they  had  become  a  people  within  the  Empire 
that  right  was  admitted  and  no  word  spoken,  which 
would  not  have  been  the  case  a  few  years  ago.  One 
may  mistake  many  signs  on  the  road,  but  there  is 
no  mistaking  the  spirit  of  sane  and  realised  nation- 
ality, which  fills  the  land  from  end  to  end  precisely 
as  the  joyous  hum  of  a  big  dynamo  well  settled  to  its 
load  makes  a  background  to  all  the  other  shop  noises. 
For  many  reasons  that  Spirit  came  late,  but  since 


214  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

it  has  come  after  the  day  of  little  things,  doubts,  and 
open  or  veiled  contempts,  there  is  less  danger  that  it 
will  go  astray  among  the  boundless  wealth  and  luxury 
that  await  it.  The  people,  the  schools,  the  churches, 
the  Press  in  its  degree,  and,  above  all,  the  women, 
understand  without  manifestoes  that  their  land 
must  now  as  always  abide  under  the  Law  in  deed 
and  in  word  and  in  thought.  This  is  their  caste- 
mark,  the  ark  of  their  covenant,  their  reason  for 
being  what  they  are.  In  the  big  cities,  with  their 
village-like  lists  of  police  court  offences;  in  the  wide- 
open  little  Western  towns  where  the  present  is  as 
free  as  the  lives  and  the  future  as  safe  as  the  property 
of  their  inhabitants;  in  the  coast  cities  galled  and 
humiliated  at  their  one  night's  riot  ("It's  not  our 
habit,  Sir!  It's  not  our  habit!");  up  among  the 
mountains  where  the  officers  of  the  law  track  and 
carefully  bring  into  justice  the  astounded  malefac- 
tor; and  behind  the  orderly  prairies  to  the  barren 
grounds,  as  far  as  a  single  white  man  can  walk,  the 
relentless  spirit  of  the  breed  follows  up,  and  oversees, 
and  controls.  It  does  not  much  express  itself  in 
words,  but  sometimes,  in  intimate  discussion,  one 
is  privileged  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  inner  fires. 
They  burn  hotly. 

"  We  do  not  mean  to  be  de-civilised,"  said  the 
first  man  with  whom  I  talked  about  it. 

That  was  the  answer  throughout — the  keynote 
and  the  explanation. 


A  CONCLUSION  215 

Otherwise,  the  Canadians  are  as  human  as  the  rest 
of  us  to  evade  or  deny  a  plain  issue.  The  duty  of 
developing  their  country  is  always  present,  but 
when  it  comes  to  taking  thought,  better  thought, 
for  her  defence,  they  refuge  behind  loose  words  and 
childish  anticipations  of  miracles — quite  in  the  best 
Imperial  manner.  All  admit  that  Canada  is  wealthy; 
few  that  she  is  weak;  still  fewer  that,  unsupported, 
she  would  very  soon  cease  to  exist  as  a  nation.  The 
anxious  inquirer  is  told  that  she  does  her  duty  towards 
England  by  developing  her  resources;  that  wages 
are  so  high  a  paid  army  is  out  of  the  question; 
that  she  is  really  maturing  splendid  defence  schemes, 
but  must  not  be  hurried  or  dictated  to;  that  a  little 
wise  diplomacy  is  all  that  will  ever  be  needed  in  this 
so  civilised  era;  that  when  the  evil  day  comes  some- 
thing will  happen  (it  certainly  will),  the  whole  con- 
cluding, very  often,  with  a  fervent  essay  on  the  im- 
morality of  war,  about  as  much  to  the  point  as  carry- 
ing a  dove  through  the  streets  to  allay  a  pestilence. 

The  question  before  Canada  is  not  what  she  thinks 
or  pays,  but  what  an  enemy  may  think  it  necessary 
to  make  her  pay.  If  she  continues  wealthy  and  re- 
mains weak  she  will  surely  be  attacked  under  one 
pretext  or  another.  Then  she  will  go  under,  and  her 
spirit  will  return  to  the  dust  with  her  flag  as  it  slides 
down  the  halliards. 

"That  is  absurd,"  is  always  the  quick  answer. 
'In  her  own  interests  England  could  never  permit 


216  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

it.  What  you  speak  of  presupposes  the  fall  of 
England." 

Not  necessarily.  Nothing  worse  than  a  stumble 
by  the  way;  but  when  England  stumbles  the  Empire 
shakes.  Canada's  weakness  is  lack  of  men.  Eng- 
land's weakness  is  an  excess  of  voters  who  propose 
to  live  at  the  expense  of  the  State.  These  loudly 
resent  that  any  money  should  be  diverted  from 
themselves;  and  since  money  is  spent  on  fleets  and 
armies  to  protect  the  Empire  while  it  is  consolidating, 
they  argue  that  if  the  Empire  ceased  to  exist  arma- 
ments would  cease  too,  and  the  money  so  saved  could 
be  spent  on  their  proper  comforts.  They  pride 
themselves  on  being  an  avowed  and  organized  en- 
emy of  the  Empire  which,  as  others  see  it,  waits 
only  to  give  them  health,  prosperity,  and  power 
beyond  anything  their  votes  could  win  them  in 
England.  But  their  leaders  need  their  votes  in 
England,  as  they  need  their  outcries  and  discomforts 
to  help  them  in  their  municipal  and  Parliamentary 
careers.  No  engineer  lowers  steam  in  his  own 
boilers. 

So  they  are  told  little  except  evil  of  the  great  heri- 
tage outside,  and  are  kept  compounded  in  cities 
under  promise  of  free  rations  and  amusements.  If 
the  Empire  were  threatened  they  would  not,  in  their 
own  interests,  urge  England  to  spend  men  and  money 
on  it.  Consequently  it  might  be  well  if  the  nations 
within  the  Empire  were  strong  enough  to  endure  a 


A  CONCLUSION  217 

little  battering  unaided  at  the  first  outset — till  such 
time,  that  is,  as  England  were  permitted  to  move  to 
their  help. 

For  this  end  an  influx  of  good  men  is  needed 
more  urgently  every  year  during  which  peace  holds — 
men  loyal,  clean,  and  experienced  in  citizenship, 
with  women  not  ignorant  of  sacrifice. 

Here  the  gentlemen  who  propose  to  be  kept 
by  their  neighbours  are  our  helpful  allies.  They 
have  succeeded  in  making  uneasy  the  class  immedi- 
ately above  them,  which  is  the  English  working  class 
as  yet  undebauched  by  the  temptation  of  State-aided 
idleness  or  State-guaranteed  irresponsibility.  Eng- 
land has  millions  of  such  silent  careful  folk  accus- 
tomed, even  yet,  to  provide  for  their  own  offspring, 
to  bring  them  up  in  a  resolute  fear  of  God,  and  to 
desire  no  more  than  the  reward  of  their  own  labours. 
A  few  years  ago  this  class  would  not  have  cared  to 
shift;  now  they  feel  the  general  disquiet.  They  live 
close  to  it.  Tea-and-sugar  borrowing  friends  have 
told  them  jocularly,  or  with  threats,  of  a  good  time 
coming  when  things  will  go  hard  with  the  uncheer- 
ful  giver.  The  prospect  appeals  neither  to  their 
reason  nor  to  their  Savings  Bank  books.  They  hear 
— they  do  not  need  to  read — the  speeches  delivered 
in  their  streets  on  a  Sunday  morning.  It  is  one  of 
their  pre-occupations  to  send  their  children  to  Sun- 
day School  by  roundabout  roads,  lest  they  should 
pick  up   abominable   blasphemies.     When   the  tills 


2i8  LETTERS  TO  THE  FAMILY 

of  the  little  shops  are  raided,  or  when  the  family 
ne'er-do-well  levies  on  his  women  with  more  than 
usual  brutality,  they  know,  because  they  suffer,  what 
principles  are  being  put  into  practice.  If  these 
people  could  quietly  be  shown  a  quiet  way  out  of 
it  all,  very  many  of  them  would  call  in  their  savings 
(they  are  richer  than  they  look),  and  slip  quietly 
away.  In  the  English  country,  as  well  as  in  the 
towns,  there  is  a  feeling — not  yet  panic,  but  the  dull 
edge  of  it — that  the  future  will  be  none  too  rosy  for 
such  as  are  working,  or  are  in  the  habit  of  working. 
This  is  all  to  our  advantage. 

Canada  can  best  serve  her  own  interests  and  those 
of  the  Empire  by  systematically  exploiting  this  new 
recruitingrground.  Now  that  South  Africa,  with  the 
exception  of  Rhodesia,  has  been  paralysed,  and 
Australia  has  not  yet  learned  the  things  which  belong 
to  her  peace,  Canada  has  the  chance  of  the  century 
to  attract  good  men  and  capital  into  the  Dominion. 
But  the  men  are  much  more  important  than  the 
money.  They  may  not  at  first  be  as  clever  with  the 
hoe  as  the  Bessarabian  or  the  Bokhariot,  or  whatever 
the  fashionable  breed  is,  but  they  have  qualities  of 
pluck,  good  humour,  and  a  certain  well-wearing 
virtue  which  are  not  altogether  bad;  they  will  not 
hold  aloof  from  the  life  of  the  land,  nor  pray  in 
unknown  tongues  to  Byzantine  saints;  while  the 
very  tenacity  and  caution  which  made  them  cleave 
to  England  this  long,  help  them  to  root  deeply  else- 


A  CONCLUSION  219 

where.  They  are  more  likely  to  bring  their  women 
than  other  classes,  and  those  women  will  make 
sacred  and  individual  homes.  A  little  regarded 
Crown  Colony  has  a  proverb  that  no  district  can  be 
called  settled  till  there  are  pots  of  musk  in  the  house- 
windows — sure  sign  that  an  English  family  has  come 
to  stay.  It  is  not  certain  how  much  of  the  present 
steamer-dumped  foreign  population  has  any  such 
idea.  We  have  seen  a  financial  panic  in  one  country 
send  whole  army  corps  of  aliens  kiting  back  to  the 
lands  whose  allegiance  they  forswore.  What  would 
they  or  their  likes  do  in  time  of  real  stress,  since  no 
instinct  in  their  bodies  or  their  souls  would  call  them 
to  stand  by  till  the  storm  were  over? 

Surely  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  through- 
out the  whole  Empire  must  be  men  and  women  of 
our  own  stock,  habits,  language,  and  hopes  brought 
in  by  every  possible  means  under  a  well-settled 
policy?  Time  will  not  be  allowed  us  to  multiply  to 
unquestionable  peace,  but  by  drawing  upon  England 
we  can  swiftly  transfuse  what  we  need  of  her  strength 
into  her  veins,  and  by  that  operation  bleed  her  into 
health  and  sanity. 

Meantime,  the  only  serious  enemy  to  the  Empire, 
within  or  without,  is  that  very  Democracy  which 
depends  on  the  Empire  for  its  proper  comforts,  and 
in  whose  behalf  these  things  are  urged. 


EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 
1913 

Sea  Travel. 

A  Return  to  the  East. 

A  Serpent  of  the  Nile. 

Up  the  River. 

Dead  Kings. 

The  Face  of  the  Desert. 

The  Riddle  of  Empire. 


And  the  magicians  of  Egypt  did  so  with  their 
enchantments.— Exodus  vii.  22. 


I 

Sea  Travel 

I  had  left  Europe  for  no  reason  except  to  discover  the 
sun,  and  there  were  rumours  that  he  was  to  be  found 
in  Egypt. 

But  I  had  not  realized  what  more  I  should  find  there. 

A  P.  &  O.  boat  carried  us  out  of  Marseilles.  A 
serang  of  lascars,  with  whistle,  chain,  shawl,  and 
fluttering  blue  clothes,  was  at  work  on  the  baggage- 
hatch.  Somebody  bungled  at  the  winch.  The 
serang  called  him  a  name  unlovely  in  itself  but 
awakening  delightful  memories  in  the  hearer. 

"O  Serang,  is  that  man  a  fool?" 

"Very  foolish,  sahib.  He  comes  from  Surat.  He 
only  comes  for  his  food's  sake." 

The  serang  grinned;  the  Surtee  man  grinned;  the 
winch  began  again,  and  the  voices  that  called: 
"Lower  away!  Stop  her!"  were  as  familiar  as  the 
friendly  whifF  from  the  lascars'  galley  or  the  slap 
of  bare  feet  along  the  deck.  But  for  the  passage  of  a 
few  impertinent  years,  I  should  have  gone  without 
hesitation  to  share  their  rice.  Serangs  used  to  be  very 
kind  to  little  white  children  below  the  age  of  caste. 
Most   familiar  of  all  was  the   ship   itself.     It   had 

22% 


224         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

slipped  my  memory,  nor  was  there  anything  in  the 
rates  charged  to  remind  me  that  single-screws  still 
lingered  in  the  gilt-edged  passenger  trade. 

Some  North  Atlantic  passengers  accustomed  to 
real  ships  made  the  discovery,  and  were  as  pleased 
about  it  as  American  tourists  at  Stratford-on-Avon. 

"Oh,  come  and  see!"  they  cried.  "She  has  one 
screw — only  one  screw!  Hear  her  thump!  And 
have  you  seen  their  old  barn  of  a  saloon?  And  the 
officers'  library  ?  It's  open  for  two  half-hours  a  day 
week-days  and  one  on  Sundays.  You  pay  a  dollar 
and  a  quarter  deposit  on  each  book.  We  wouldn't 
have  missed  this  trip  for  anything.  It's  like  sailing 
with  Columbus." 

They  wandered  about — voluble,  amazed,  and 
happy,  for  they  were  getting  off  at  Port  Said. 

I  explored,  too.  From  the  rough-ironed  table 
linen,  the  thick  tooth-glasses  for  the  drinks,  the 
slummocky  set-out  of  victuals  at  meals,  to  the 
unaccommodating  regulations  in  the  curtainless 
cabin,  where  they  had  not  yet  arrived  at  bunk-edge 
trays  for  morning  tea,  time  and  progress  had  stood 
still  with  the  P.  &  O.  To  be  just,  there  were  electric 
fan-fittings  in  the  cabins,  but  the  fans  were  charged 
extra;  and  there  was  a  rumour,  unverified,  that  one 
could  eat  on  deck  or  in  one's  cabin  without  a  medical 
certificate  from  the  doctor.  All  the  rest  was  under 
the  old  motto:  "Quis  separabit" — "This  is  quite 
separate  from  other  lines." 


SEA  TRAVEL  225 

"After  all,"  said  an  Anglo-Indian,  whom  I  was 
telling  about  civilised  ocean  travel,  "they  don't 
want  you   Egyptian   trippers.     They're   sure  of  us 

because "  and  he  gave  me  many  strong  reasons 

connected  with  leave,  finance,  the  absence  of  competi- 
tion, and  the  ownership  of  the  Bombay  fore-shore. 

"But  it's  absurd,"  I  insisted.  "The  whole  con- 
cern is  out  of  date.  There's  a  notice  on  my  deck 
forbidding  smoking  and  the  use  of  naked  lights,  and 
there's  a  lascar  messing  about  the  hold-hatch  outside 
my  cabin  with  a  candle  in  a  lantern." 

Meantime,  our  one-screw  tub  thumped  gingerly 
toward  Port  Said,  because  we  had  no  mails  aboard, 
and  the  Mediterranean,  exhausted  after  severe  Febru- 
ary hysterics,  lay  out  like  oil. 

I  had  some  talk  with  a  Scotch  quartermaster  who 
complained  that  lascars  are  not  what  they  used  to  be, 
owing  to  their  habit  (but  it  has  existed  since  the  be- 
ginning) of  signing  on  as  a  clan  or  family — all  sorts 
together. 

The  serang  said  that,  for  his  part,  he  had  noticed  no 
difference  in  twenty  years.  "Men  are  always  of 
many  kinds,  sahib.  And  that  is  because  God  makes 
men  this  and  that.  Not  all  one  pattern — not  by 
any  means  all  one  pattern."  He  told  me,  too,  that 
wages  were  rising,  but  the  price  of  ghee,  rice,  and 
curry-stuffs  was  up,  too,  which  was  bad  for  wives 
and  families  at  Porbandar.  "And  that  also  is  thus, 
and  no  talk  makes  it  otherwise."     After  Suez,  he 


226         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

would  have  blossomed  into  thin  clothes  and  a  long 
talk,  but  the  bitter  spring  chill  nipped  him,  as  the 
thought  of  partings  just  accomplished  and  work  just 
ahead  chilled  the  Anglo-Indian  contingent.  Little  by 
little  one  came  at  the  outlines  of  the  old  stories — a 
sick  wife  left  behind  here,  a  boy  there,  a  daughter 
at  school,  a  very  small  daughter  trusted  to  friends 
or  hirelings,  certain  separation  for  so  many  years 
and  no  great  hope  or  delight  in  the  future.  It 
was  not  a  nice  India  that  the  tales  hinted  at.  Here 
is  one  that  explains  a  great  deal: 

There  was  a  Pathan,  a  Mohammedan,  in  a  Hindu 
village,  employed  by  the  village  money-lender  as  a 
debt-collector,  which  is  not  a  popular  trade.  He 
lived  alone  among  Hindus,  and — so  ran  the  charge 
in  the  lower  court — he  wilfully  broke  the  caste  of  a 
Hindu  villager  by  forcing  on  him  forbidden  Mussul- 
man food,  and  when  that  pious  villager  would  have 
taken  him  before  the  headman  to  make  reparation, 
the  godless  one  drew  his  Afghan  knife  and  killed  the 
head  man,  besides  wounding  a  few  others.  The 
evidence  ran  without  flaw,  as  smoothly  as  well- 
arranged  cases  should,  and  the  Pathan  was  con- 
demned to  death  for  wilful  murder.  He  appealed 
and,  by  some  arrangement  or  other,  got  leave  to  state 
his  case  personally  to  the  Court  of  Revision.  Said, 
I  believe,  that  he  did  not  much  trust  lawyers,  but 
that  if  the  sahibs  would  give  him  a  hearing,  as  man 
to  man,  he  might  have  a  run  for  his  money. 


SEA  TRAVEL  227 

Out  of  the  jail,  then,  he  came,  and,  Pathanlike, 
not  content  with  his  own  good  facts,  must  needs  be- 
gin by  some  fairy-tale  that  he  was  a  secret  agent  of 
the  government  sent  down  to  spy  on  that  village. 
Then  he  warmed  to  it.  Yes,  he  was  that  money- 
lender's agent — a  persuader  of  the  reluctant,  if  you 
like — working  for  a  Hindu  employer.  Naturally, 
many  men  owed  him  grudges.  A  lot  of  the  evidence 
against  him  was  quite  true,  but  the  prosecution  had 
twisted  it  abominably.  About  that  knife,  for  in- 
stance. True,  he  had  a  knife  in  his  hand  exactly  as 
they  had  alleged.  But  why?  Because  with  that 
very  knife  he  was  cutting  up  and  distributing  a  roast 
sheep  which  he  had  given  as  a  feast  to  the  villagers. 
At  that  feast,  he  sitting  in  amity  with  all  his  world, 
the  village  rose  up  at  the  word  of  command,  laid 
hands  on  him,  and  dragged  him  off  to  the  head 
man's  house.  How  could  he  have  broken  any  man's 
caste  wh§n  they  were  all  eating  his  sheep?  And  in 
the  courtyard  of  the  head  man's  house  they  sur- 
rounded him  with  heavy  sticks  and  worked  them- 
selves into  anger  against  him,  each  man  exciting  his 
neighbour.  He  was  a  Pathan.  He  knew  what 
that  sort  of  talk  meant.  A  man  cannot  collect  debts 
without  making  enemies.  So  he  warned  them. 
Again  and  again  he  warned  them,  saying:  "Leave 
me  alone.  Do  not  lay  hands  on  me."  But  the 
trouble  grew  worse,  and  he  saw  it  was  intended  that 
he  should  be  clubbed  to  death  like  a  jackal  in  a  drain. 


228         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

Then  he  said,  "If  blows  are  struck,  I  strike,  and  / 
strike  to  kill,  because  I  am  a  Pathan."  But  the 
blows  were  struck,  heavy  ones.  Therefore,  with  the 
very  Afghan  knife  that  had  cut  up  the  mutton,  he 
struck  the  head  man.  "Had  you  meant  to  kill  the 
head  man?"  "Assuredly!  lama  Pathan.  When 
I  strike,  I  strike  to  kill.  I  had  warned  them  again 
and  again.  I  think  I  got  him  in  the  liver.  He 
died.  And  that  is  all  there  is  to  it,  sahibs.  It  was 
my  life  or  theirs.  They  would  have  taken  mine 
over  my  freely  given  meats.  Now,  what'll  you  do 
with  me?" 

In  the  long  run,  he  got  several  years  for  culpable 
homicide. 

"But,"  said  I,  when  the  tale  had  been  told,  "what- 
ever made  the  lower  court  accept  all  that  village  evi- 
dence ?     It  was  too  good  on  the  face  of  it." 

"The  lower  court  said  it  could  not  believe  it  possi- 
ble that  so  many  respectable  native  gentlemen 
could  have  banded  themselves  together  to  tell  a 
lie." 

"Oh!  Had  the  lower  court  been  long  in  the 
country?" 

"It  was  a  native  judge,"  was  the  reply. 

If  you  think  this  over  in  all  its  bearings,  you  will 
see  that  the  lower  court  was  absolutely  sincere. 
Was  not  the  lower  court  itself  a  product  of  Western 
civilisation,  and,  as  such,  bound  to  play  up — to 
pretend  to  think  along  Western  lines — translating 


SEA  TRAVEL  229 

each  grade  of  Indian  village  society  into  its  English 
equivalent,  and  ruling  as  an  English  judge  would 
have  ruled?  Pathans  and,  incidentally,  English 
officials  must  look  after  themselves. 

There  is  a  fell  disease  of  this  century  called  "snob- 
bery of  the  soul."  Its  germ  has  been  virulently 
developed  in  modern  cultures  from  the  uncomplex 
bacillus  isolated  sixty  years  ago  by  the  late  William 
Makepeace  Thackeray.  Precisely  as  Major  Ponto, 
with  his  plated  dishes  and  stable-boy  masquerading 
as  footman,  lied  to  himself  and  his  guests  so — but 
the  "Book  of  Snobs"  can  only  be  brought  up  to  date 
by  him  who  wrote  it. 

Then,  a  man  struck  in  from  the  Sudan — far  and 
far  to  the  south — with  a  story  of  a  discomposed 
judge  and  a  much  too  collected  prisoner. 

To  the  great  bazaars  of  Omdurman,  where  all 
things  are  sold,  came  a  young  man  from  the  utter- 
most deserts  of  somewhere  or  other  and  heard  a 
gramophone.  Life  was  of  no  value  to  him  till  he 
had  bought  the  creature.  He  took  it  back  to  his 
village,  and  at  twilight  set  it  going  among  his  rav- 
ished friends.  His  father,  sheik  of  the  village, 
came  also,  listened  to  the  loud  shoutings  without 
breath,  the  strong  music  lacking  musicians,  and  said, 
justly  enough:  "This  thing  is  a  devil.  You  must 
not  bring  devils  into  my  village.     Lock  it  up." 

They  waited  until  he  had  gone  away  and  then 
began  another  tune.     A  second  time  the  sheik  came, 


23o         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

repeated  the  command,  and  added  that  if  the  singing 
box  was  heard  again,  he  would  slay  the  buyer.  But 
their  curiosity  and  joy  defied  even  this,  and  for  the 
third  time  (late  at  night)  they  slipped  in  pin  and  rec- 
ord and  let  the  djinn  rave.  So  the  sheik,  with  his 
rifle,  shot  his  son  as  he  had  promised,  and  the  English 
judge  before  whom  he  eventually  came  had  all  the 
trouble  in  the  world  to  save  that  earnest  gray  head 
from  the  gallows.     Thus: 

"Now,  old  man,  you  must  say  guilty  or  not 
guilty." 

"But  I  shot  him.     That  is  why  I  am  here.     I " 

"Hush!  It  is  a  form  of  words  which  the  law  asks. 
(Sotto  voce.  Write  down  that  the  old  idiot  doesn't 
understand.)     Be  still  now." 

"But  I  shot  him.  What  else  could  I  have  done? 
He  bought  a  devil  in  a  box,  and " 

"Quiet!     That  comes  later.     Leave  talking." 

"But  I  am  sheik  of  the  village.  One  must  not 
bring  devils  into  a  village.  I  said  I  would  shoot 
him." 

"This  matter  is  in  the  hands  of  the  law.  I 
judge. 

"What  need?  I  shot  him.  Suppose  that  your 
son  had  brought  a  devil  in  a  box  to  your  village " 

They  explained  to  him,  at  last,  that  under  British 
rule  fathers  must  hand  over  devil-dealing  children  to 
be  shot  by  the  white  men  (the  first  step,  you  see, 
on  the  downward  path  of  state  aid),  and  that  he  must 


SEA  TRAVEL  231 

go  to  prison  for  several  months  for  interfering  with  a 
government  shoot. 

We  are  a  great  race.  There  was  a  pious  young 
judge  in  Nigeria  once,  who  kept  a  condemned  pris- 
oner waiting  very  many  minutes  while  he  hunted 
through  the  Hausa  dictionary,  word  by  word,  for, 
"May — God — have — mercy — on — your — soul." 

And  I  heard  another  tale — about  the  Suez  Canal 
this  time — a  hint  of  what  may  happen  some  day  at 
Panama.  There  was  a  tramp  steamer,  loaded  with 
high  explosives,  on  her  way  to  the  East,  and  at  the 
far  end  of  the  canal  one  of  the  sailors  very  naturally 
upset  a  lamp  in  the  foc'sle.  After  a  heated  interval 
the  crew  took  to  the  desert  alongside,  while  the  cap- 
tain and  the  mate  opened  all  cocks  and  sank  her, 
not  in  the  fairway  but  up  against  a  bank,  just  leav- 
ing room  for  a  steamer  to  squeeze  past.  Then  the 
canal  authorities  wired  to  her  charterers  to  know 
exactly  what  there  might  be  in  her;  and  it  is  said  that 
the  reply  kept  them  awake  of  nights,  for  it  was  their 
business  to  blow  her  up. 

Meantime,  traffic  had  to  go  through,  and  a  P.  & 
O.  steamer  came  along.  There  was  the  canal;  there 
was  the  sunken  wreck,  marked  by  one  elderly  Arab 
in  a  little  boat  with  a  red  flag,  and  there  was  about 
five  foot  clearance  on  each  side  for  the  P.  &  O.  She 
went  through  a-tiptoe,  because  even  fifty  tons  of 
dynamite  will  jar  a  boat  perceptibly,  and  the  tramp 
held  more — very  much  more,  not  to  mention  detona- 


232         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

tors.  By  some  absurd  chance,  almost  the  only  pas- 
senger who  knew  about  the  thing  at  the  time  was  an 
old  lady  rather  proud  of  the  secret. 

"Ah,"  she  said,  in  the  middle  of  the  agonised 
glide,  "you  may  depend  upon  it  that  if  everybody 
knew  what  /  know,  they'd  all  be  on  the  other  side 
of  the  ship." 

Later  on,  the  authorities  blew  up  the  tramp  with 
infinite  precautions  from  some  two  miles  off,  for 
which  reason  she  neither  destroyed  the  Suez  Canal 
nor  dislocated  the  Sweet  Water  Canal  alongside, 
but  merely  dug  out  a  hole  a  hundred  feet  or  a  hundred 
yards  deep,  and  so  vanished  from  Lloyds'  register. 

But  no  stories  could  divert  one  long  from  the 
peculiarities  of  that  amazing  line  which  exists 
strictly  for  itself.  There  was  a  bathroom  (occu- 
pied) at  the  windy  end  of  an  open  alleyway.  In 
due  time  the  bather  came  out. 

Said  the  steward,  as  he  swabbed  out  the  tub  for 
his  successor:  "That  was  the  chief  engineer.  'E's 
been  some  time.  Must  *ave  'ad  a  mucky  job  below, 
this  mornin'." 

I  have  a  great  admiration  for  chief  engineers. 
They  are  men  in  authority,  needing  all  the  com- 
forts and  aids  that  can  possibly  be  given  them — 
such  as  bathrooms  of  their  own  close  to  their  own 
cabins,  where  they  can  clean  off  at  leisure. 

It  is  not  fair  to  mix  them  up  with  the  ruck  of 
passengers,  nor  is  it  done  on  real  ships.     Nor,  when  a 


SEA  TRAVEL  233 

passenger  wants  a  bath  in  the  evening,  do  the  stew- 
ards of  real  ships  roll  their  eyes  like  vergers  in  a 
cathedral  and  say,  "We'll  see  if  it  can  be  managed." 
They  double  down  the  alleyway  and  shout, 
"Matcham"  or  "Ponting"  or  "Guttman,"  and  in 
fifteen  seconds  one  of  those  swift  three  has  the  taps 
going  and  the  towels  out.  Real  ships  are  not  an- 
nexes of  Westminster  Abbey  or  Borstal  Reformatory. 
They  supply  decent  accommodation  in  return  for 
good  money,  and  I  imagine  that  their  directors  in- 
struct their  staffs  to  look  pleased  while  at  work. 

Some  generations  back  there  must  have  been  an 
idea  that  the  P.  &  O.  was  vastly  superior  to  all  lines 
afloat — a  sort  of  semipontifical  show  not  to  be  criti- 
cised. How  much  of  the  notion  was  due  to  its  own 
excellence  and  how  much  to  its  passenger-traffic  mo- 
nopoly does  not  matter.  To-day,  it  neither  feeds  nor 
tends  its  passengers,  nor  keeps  its  ships  well  enough 
to  put  on  any  airs  at  all. 

For  which  reason,  human  nature  being  what 
it  is,  it  surrounds  itself  with  an  ungracious  atmos- 
phere of  absurd  ritual  to  cover  grudged  and  in- 
adequate performance. 

What  it  really  needs  is  to  be  dropped  into  a  March 
North  Atlantic,  without  any  lascars,  and  made  to 
swim  for  its  life  between  a  C.P.R.  boat  and  a  North 
German  Lloyd — till  it  learns  to  smile. 


II 

A  Return  to  the  East 

The  East  is  a  much  larger  slice  of  the  world  than 
Europeans  care  to  admit.  Some  say  it  begins  at 
St.  Gothard,  where  the  smells  of  two  continents  meet 
and  fight  all  through  that  terrible  restaurant-car 
dinner  in  the  tunnel.  Others  have  found  it  at  Ven- 
ice on  warm  April  mornings.  But  the  East  is  wher- 
ever one  sees  the  lateen  sail — that  shark's  fin  of  a 
rig  which  for  hundreds  of  years  has  dogged  all  white 
bathers  round  the  Mediterranean.  There  is  still  a 
suggestion  of  menace,  a  hint  of  piracy,  in  the  blood 
whenever  the  lateen  goes  by,  fishing  or  fruiting  or 
coasting. 

"This  is  not  my  ancestral  trade,"  she  whispers 
to  the  accomplice  sea.  "If  everybody  had  their 
rights  I  should  be  doing  something  quite  different; 
for  my  father,  he  was  the  Junk,  and  my  mother, 
she  was  the  Dhow,  and  between  the  two  of  'em 
they  made  Asia."  Then  she  tacks,  disorderly  but 
deadly  quick,  and  shuffles  past  the  unimaginative 
steam-packet  with  her  hat  over  one  eye  and  a  knife, 
as  it  were,  up  her  baggy  sleeves. 

Even  the  stone-boats  at  Port  Said,  busied  on  jetty 

234 


A  RETURN  TO  THE  EAST  235 

extensions,  show  their  untamed  descent  beneath  their 
loaded  clumsiness.  They  are  all  children  of  the 
camel-nosed  dhow,  who  is  the  mother  of  mischief, 
but  it  was  very  good  to  meet  them  again  in  raw  sun- 
shine, unchanged  in  any  rope  and  patch. 

Old  Port  Said  had  disappeared  beneath  acres  of 
new  buildings  where  one  could  walk  at  leisure  without 
being  turned  back  by  soldiers. 

Two  or  three  landmarks  remained;  two  or  three 
were  reported  as  still  in  existence,  and  one  Face 
showed  itself  after  many  years — ravaged  but  re- 
spectable— rigidly   respectable. 

"Yes,"  said  the  Face,  "I  have  been  here  all  the 
time.  But  I  have  made  money,  and  when  I  die  I 
am  going  home  to  be  buried." 

"  Why  not  go  home  before  you  are  buried,  O  Face  ? " 

"Because  I  have  lived  here  so  long.  Home  is 
only  good  to  be  buried  in." 

"And  what  do  you  do,  nowadays?" 

"Nothing    now.     I    live    on    my    rentes — my    in- 


come." 


Think  of  it!  To  live  icily  in  a  perpetual  cinema- 
tograph show  of  excited,  uneasy  travellers;  to  watch 
huge  steamers  sliding  in  and  out  all  day  and  all  night 
like  railway  trucks,  unknowing  and  unsought  by  a 
single  soul  aboard;  to  talk  five  or  six  tongues  indif- 
ferently, but  to  have  no  country — no  interest  in  any 
earth  except  one  reservation  in  a  Continental  ceme- 
tery. 


236         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

It  was  a  cold  evening  after  heavy  rain  and  the 
half-flooded  streets  reeked.  But  we  undefeated 
tourists  ran  about  in  droves  and  saw  all  that  could 
be  seen  before  train-time.  We  missed,  most  of  us, 
the  Canal  Company's  garden,  which  happens  to 
mark  a  certain  dreadful  and  exact  division  between 
East  and  West. 

Up  to  that  point — it  is  a  fringe  of  palms,  stiff 
against  the  sky — the  impetus  of  home  memories  and 
the  echo  of  home  interests  carry  the  young  man  along 
very  comfortably  on  his  first  journey.  But  at  Suez 
one  must  face  things.  People,  generally  the  most 
sympathetic,  leave  the  boat  there;  the  older  men 
who  are  going  on  have  discovered  each  other  and 
begun  to  talk  shop;  no  newspapers  come  aboard, 
only  clipped  Reuter  telegrams;  the  world  seems 
cruelly  large  and  self-absorbed.  One  goes  for  a  walk 
and  finds  this  little  bit  of  kept  ground,  with  comfort- 
able garden-gated  houses  on  either  side  of  the  path. 
Then  one  begins  to  wonder,  in  the  twilight,  for  choice, 
when  one  will  see  those  palms  again  from  the  other 
side.  Then  the  black  hour  of  homesickness,  vain 
regrets,  foolish  promises,  and  weak  despair  shuts 
down  with  the  smell  of  strange  earth  and  the  ca- 
dence of  strange  tongues. 

Cross-roads  and  halting-places  in  the  desert  are 
always  favoured  by  djinns  and  afrits.  The  young 
man  will  find  them  waiting  for  him  in  the  Canal 
Company's  garden  at  Port  Said. 


A  RETURN  TO  THE  EAST  237 

On  the  other  hand,  if  he  is  fortunate  enough  to  have 
won  the  East  by  inheritance,  as  there  are  families  who 
served  her  for  five  or  six  generations,  he  will  meet 
no  ghouls  in  that  garden,  but  a  free  and  a  friendly 
and  an  ample  welcome  from  good  spirits  of  the  East 
that  awaits  him.  The  voices  of  the  gardeners  and  the 
watchmen  will  be  as  the  greetings  of  his  father's 
servants  in  his  father's  house;  the  evening  smells 
and  the  sight  of  the  hibiscus  and  poinsettia  will  un- 
lock his  tongue  in  words  and  sentences  that  he  thought 
he  had  clean  forgotten,  and  he  will  go  back  to  the 
ship  (I  have  seen)  as  a  prince  entering  on  his  kingdom. 

There  was  a  man  in  our  company — a  young 
Englishman — who  had  just  been  granted  his  heart's 
desire  in  the  shape  of  some  raw  district  south  of 
everything  southerly  in  the  Sudan,  where,  on  two- 
thirds  of  a  member  of  Parliament's  wage,  under 
conditions  of  life  that  would  horrify  a  self-respecting 
operative,  he  will  see  perhaps  some  dozen  white  men 
in  a  year,  and  will  certainly  pick  up  two  sorts  of 
fever.  He  had  been  moved  to  work  very  hard  for 
this  billet  by  the  representations  of  a  friend  in  the 
same  service,  who  said  that  it  was  a  "rather  decent 
sort  of  service,"  and  he  was  all  of  a  heat  to  reach 
Khartum,  report  for  duty,  and  fall  to.  If  he  is 
lucky,  he  may  get  a  district  where  the  people  are  so 
virtuous  that  they  do  not  know  how  to  wear  any 
clothes  at  all,  and  so  ignorant  that  they  have  never 
yet  come  across  strong  drink. 


238         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

The  train  that  took  us  to  Cairo  was  own  sister  in 
looks  and  fittings  to  any  South  African  train — for 
which  I  loved  her — but  she  was  a  trial  to  some 
citizens  of  the  United  States,  who,  being  used  to  the 
Pullman,  did  not  understand  the  side-corridored, 
solid-compartment  idea.  The  trouble  with  a 
standardised  democracy  seems  to  be  that,  once  they 
break  loose  from  their  standards,  they  have  no  props. 
People  are  not  left  behind  and  luggage  is  rarely 
mislaid  on  the  railroads  of  the  older  world.  There  is 
an  ordained  ritual  for  the  handling  of  all  things,  to 
which  if  a  man  will  only  conform  and  keep  quiet,  he 
and  his  will  be  attended  to  with  the  rest.  The 
people  that  I  watched  would  not  believe  this.  They 
charged  about  futilely  and  wasted  themselves  in 
trying  to  get  ahead  of  their  neighbours. 

Here  is  a  fragment  from  the  restaurant-car: 
"Look  at  here!     Me  and  some  friends  of  mine  are 
going  to  dine  at  this  table.     We  don't  want  to  be 

separated  and " 

"You  'ave  your  number  for  the  service,  sar?" 
"Number?     What   number?     We   want   to    dine 
here,  I  tell  you." 

"You  shall  get  your  number,   sar,   for  the  first 

5  it 

service  r 

"How's  that?  Where  in  thunder  do  we  get  the 
numbers,  anyway?" 

"I  will  give  you  the  number,  sar,  at  the  time — for 
places  at  the  first  service." 


A  RETURN  TO  THE  EAST  239 

"Yes,  but  we  want  to  dine  together  here — right  now." 

"The  service  is  not  yet  ready,  sar." 

And  so  on — and  so  on;  with  marchings  and 
countermarchings,  and  every  word  nervously 
italicised.  In  the  end  they  dined  precisely  where 
there  was  room  for  them  in  that  new  world  which 
they  had  strayed  into. 

On  one  side  our  windows  looked  out  on  darkness 
of  the  waste;  on  the  other  at  the  black  canal,  all 
spaced  with  monstrous  headlights  of  the  night- 
running  steamers.  Then  came  towns,  lighted  with 
electricity,  governed  by  mixed  commissions,  and 
dealing  in  cotton.  Such  a  town,  for  instance,  as 
Zagazig,  last  seen  by  a  very  small  boy  who  was 
lifted  out  of  a  railway-carriage  and  set  down  beneath 
a  whitewashed  wall  under  naked  stars  in  an  illimit- 
able emptiness  because,  they  told  him,  the  train  was 
on  fire.  Childlike,  this  did  not  worry  him.  What 
stuck  in  his  sleepy  mind  was  the  absurd  name  of  the 
place  and  his  father's  prophecy  that  when  he  grew 
up  he  would  "come  that  way  in  a  big  steamer." 

So  all  his  life,  the  word  "Zagazig"  carried  mem- 
ories of  a  brick  shed,  the  flicker  of  an  oil-lamp's 
floating  wick,  a  sky  full  of  eyes,  and  an  engine 
coughing  in  a  desert  at  the  world's  end;  which 
memories  returned  in  a  restaurant-car  jolting  through 
what  seemed  to  be  miles  of  brilliantly  lighted  streets 
and  factories.  No  one  at  the  table  had  even  turned 
his  head  for  the  battlefields  of  Kassassin  and  Tel-el- 


240         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

Kebir.  After  all,  why  should  they?  That  work  is 
done,  and  children  are  getting  ready  to  be  born  who 
will  say:  "/  can  remember  Gondokoro  (or  El-Obeid 
or  some  undreamed  of  Clapham  Junction,  Abyssinia- 
way)  before  a  single  factory  was  started,  before  the 
overhead  traffic  began.  Yes,  when  there  was  a 
fever — actually  fever — in  the  city  itself!" 

The  gap  is  no  greater  than  that  between  to-day's 
and  t'other  day's  Zagazig — between  the  horsed  vans 
of  the  Overland  Route  in  Lieutenant  Waghorn's 
time  and  the  shining  motor  that  flashed  us  to  our 
Cairo  hotel  through  what  looked  like  the  suburbs 
of  Marseilles  or  Rome. 

Always  keep  a  new  city  till  morning.  "In  the 
daytime,"  as  it  is  written  in  the  Perspicuous  Book,1 
"thou  hast  long  occupation."  Our  window  gave  on  to 
the  river,  but  before  one  moved  towards  it  one  heard 
the  thrilling  squeal  of  the  kites — those  same  thievish 
companions  of  the  road  who,  at  that  hour,  were 
watching  every  Englishman's  breakfast  in  every 
compound  and  camp  from  Cairo  to  Calcutta. 

Voices  rose  from  below — unintelligible  words  in 
maddeningly  familiar  accents.  A  black  boy  in  one 
blue  garment  climbed,  using  his  toes  as  lingers,  the 
tipped  mainyard  of  a  Nile  boat  and  framed  himself 
in  the  window.  Then,  because  he  felt  happy,  he 
sang,  all  among  the  wheeling  kites.     And  beneath 

xThe  Koran. 


A  RETURN  TO  THE  EAST  241 

our  balcony  rolled  very  Nile  Himself,  golden  in  sun- 
shine, wrinkled  under  strong  breezes,  with  a  crowd  of 
creaking  cargo-boats  waiting  for  a  bridge  to  be 
opened. 

On  the  cut-stone  quay  above,  a  line  of  cab  drivers 
— a  ticca-gharri  stand,  nothing  less — lolled  and 
chaffed  and  tinkered  with  their  harnesses  in  every 
beautiful  attitude  of  the  ungirt  East.  All  the 
ground  about  was  spotted  with  chewed  sugar-cane — 
first  sign  of  the  hot  weather  all  the  world  over. 

Troops  with  startlingly  pink  faces  (one  would  not 
have  noticed  this  yesterday)  rolled  over  the  girder 
bridge  between  churning  motors  and  bubbling 
camels,  and  the  whole  long-coated  loose-sleeved 
Moslem  world  was  awake  and  about  its  business,  as 
befits  sensible  people  who  pray  at  dawn. 

I  made  haste  to  cross  the  bridge  and  to  hear  the 
palms  in  the  wind  on  the  far  side.  They  sang  as 
nobly  as  though  they  had  been  true  coconuts,  and 
the  thrust  of  the  north  wind  behind  them  was  almost 
as  open-handed  as  the  thrust  of  the  Trades.  Then 
came  a  funeral — the  sheeted  corpse  in  the  shallow 
cot,  the  brisk-pacing  bearers  (if  he  was  good,  the 
sooner  he  is  buried  the  sooner  in  heaven;  if  bad,  bury 
him  swiftly  for  the  sake  of  the  household — either 
way,  as  the  Prophet  says,  do  not  let  the  mourners  go 
too  long  weeping  and  hungry) — the  women  behind, 
tossing  their  arms  and  lamenting,  and  men  and  boys 
chanting  low  and  high. 


242         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

They  might  have  come  forth  from  the  Taksali 
Gate  the  city  of  Lahore  on  just  such  a  cold  weather 
morning  as  this,  on  their  way  to  the  Mohammedan 
burial-grounds  by  the  river.  And  the  veiled  coun- 
trywomen, shuffling  side  by  side,  elbow  pressed  to 
hip,  and  eloquent  right  hand  pivoting  round,  palm 
uppermost,  to  give  value  to  each  shrill  phrase,  might 
have  been  the  wives  of  so  many  Punjabi  cultivators 
but  that  they  wore  another  type  of  bangle  and 
slipper.  A  knotty-kneed  youth  sitting  high  on  a 
donkey,  both  amuleted  against  the  evil  eye,  chewed 
three  purplish  feet  of  sugar-cane,  which  made  one 
envious  as  well  as  voluptuously  homesick,  though 
the  sugar-cane  of  Egypt  is  not  to  be  compared  with 
that  of  Bombay. 

Hans  Breitmann  writes  somewhere: 

Oh,  if  you  live  in  Leyden  town 

You'll  meet,  if  troot  be  told, 
Der  forms  of  all  der  freunds  dot  tied 

When  du  werst  six  years  old. 

And  they  were  all  there  under  the  chanting 
palms — saices,  orderlies,  pedlars,  water-carriers, 
street-cleaners,  chicken-sellers  and  the  slate-coloured 
buffalo  with  the  china-blue  eyes  being  talked  to  by  a 
little  girl  with  the  big  stick.  Behind  the  hedges 
of  well-kept  gardens  squatted  the  brown  gardener, 
making  trenches  indifferently  with  a  hoe  or  a  toe,  and 
under  the  municipal  lamp-post  lounged  the  bronze 
policeman — a  touch  of  Arab  about  mouth  and  lean 


A  RETURN  TO  THE  EAST  243 

nostril — quite  unconcerned  with  a  ferocious  row 
between  two  donkey-men.  They  were  fighting 
across  the  body  of  a  Nubian  who  had  chosen  to 
sleep  in  that  place.  Presently,  one  of  them  stepped 
back  on  the  sleeper's  stomach.  The  Nubian  grunted, 
elbowed  himself  up,  rolled  his  eyes,  and  pronounced 
a  few  utterly  dispassionate  words.  The  warriors 
stopped,  settled  their  headgear,  and  went  away  as 
quickly  as  the  Nubian  went  to  sleep  again.  This 
was  life,  the  real,  unpolluted  stuff — worth  a  desert- 
full  of  mummies.  And  right  through  the  middle  of 
it — hooting  and  kicking  up  the  Nile — passed  a 
Cook's  steamer  all  ready  to  take  tourists  to  Assuan. 
From  the  Nubian's  point  of  view  she,  and  not 
himself,  was  the  wonder — as  great  as  the  Swiss- 
controlled,  Swiss-staffed  hotel  behind  her,  whose 
lift,  maybe,  the  Nubian  helped  to  run.  Marids 
and  afrits,  guardians  of  hidden  gold,  who  choke 
or  crush  the  rash  seeker;  encounters  with  the  long- 
buried  dead  in  a  Cairo  back  alley;  undreamed-of 
promotions,  and  suddenly  lit  loves  are  the  stuff  of 
any  respectable  person's  daily  life;  but  the  white 
man  from  across  the  water,  arriving  in  hundreds  with 
his  unveiled  women  folk,  who  builds  himself  flying- 
rooms  and  talks  along  wires,  who  flees  up  and  down 
the  river,  mad  to  sit  up  on  camels  and  asses,  con- 
strained to  throw  down  silver  from  both  hands,  at 
once  a  child  and  a  warlock — this  thing  must  come  to 
the   Nubian    sheer   out   of  the    Thousand  and  One 


244         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

Nights.  At  any  rate,  the  Nubian  was  perfectly  sane. 
Having  eaten,  he  slept  in  God's  own  sunlight,  and 
I  left  him,  to  visit  the  fortunate  and  guarded  and 
desirable  city  of  Cairo,  to  whose  people,  male  and 
female,  Allah  has  given  subtlety  in  abundance. 
Their  jesters  are  known  to  have  surpassed  in  re- 
finement the  jesters  of  Damascus,  as  did  their  twelve 
police  captains  the  hardiest  and  most  corrupt  of 
Bagdad  in  the  tolerant  days  of  Harun-al-Raschid; 
while  their  old  women,  not  to  mention  their  young 
wives,  could  deceive  the  Father  of  Lies  himself. 
Delhi  is  a  great  place — most  bazaar  storytellers  in 
India  make  their  villain  hail  from  there;  but  when 
the  agony  and  intrigue  are  piled  highest  and  the  tale 
halts  till  the  very  last  breathless  sprinkle  of  cowries 
has  ceased  to  fall  on  his  mat,  why  then,  with  wagging 
head  and  hooked  forefinger,  the  storyteller  goes  on: 
"But  there  was  a  man  from  Cairo,  an  Egyptian 
of  the  Egyptians,  who" — and  all  the  crowd  knows 
that  a  bit  of  real  metropolitan  devilry  is  coming. 


Ill 

A  Serpent  of  Old  Nile 

Modern  Cairo  is  an  unkempt  place.  The  streets 
are  dirty  and  ill  constructed,  the  pavements  unswept 
and  often  broken,  the  tramways  thrown,  rather  than 
laid,  down,  the  gutters  neglected.  One  expects 
better  than  this  in  a  city  where  the  tourist  spends  so 
much  every  season.  Granted  that  the  tourist  is  a 
dog,  he  comes  at  least  with  a  bone  in  his  mouth,  and 
a  bone  that  many  people  pick.  He  should  have  a 
cleaner  kennel.  The  official  answer  is  that  the 
tourist-traffic  is  a  flea-bite  compared  with  the  cotton 
industry.  Even  so,  land  in  Cairo  city  must  be  too 
valuable  to  be  used  for  cotton  growing.  It  might 
just  as  well  be  paved  or  swept.  There  is  some  sort 
of  authority  supposed  to  be  in  charge  of  municipal 
matters,  but  its  work  is  crippled  by  what  is  called 
"The  Capitulations."  It  was  told  to  me  that  every 
one  in  Cairo  except  the  English,  who  appear  to  be 
the  mean  whites  of  these  parts,  has  the  privilege  of 
appealing  to  his  counsel  on  every  conceivable  sub- 
ject from  the  disposal  of  a  garbage-can  to  that  of  a 
corpse.  As  almost  every  one  with  claims  to  respect- 
ability, and  certainly  every  one  without  any,  keeps 

245 


246         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

a  consul,  it  follows  that  there  is  one  consul  per  super- 
ficial meter,  arshin,  or  cubit  of  Ezekiel  within  the 
city.  And  since  every  consul  is  zealous  for  the  hon- 
our of  his  country  and  not  at  all  above  annoying  the 
English  on  general  principles,  municipal  progress  is 
slow. 

Cairo  strikes  one  as  unventilated  and  unsterilised, 
even  when  the  sun  and  wind  are  scouring  it  together. 
The  tourist  talks  a  good  deal,  as  you  may  see  here, 
but  the  permanent  European  resident  does  not  open 
his  mouth  more  than  is  necessary — sound  travels  so 
far  across  flat  water.  Besides,  the  whole  position  of 
things,  politically  and  administratively,  is  essen- 
tially false. 

Here  is  a  country  which  is  not  a  country  but  a 
longish  strip  of  market-garden,  nominally  in  charge 
of  a  government  which  is  not  a  government  but  the 
disconnected  satrapy  of  a  half-dead  empire,  con- 
trolled pecksniffingly  by  a  Power  which  is  not  a 
Power  but  an  Agency,  which  Agency  has  been  tied 
up  by  years,  custom,  and  blackmail  in  all  sorts  of 
intimate  relations  with  six  or  seven  European  powers, 
all  with  rights  and  perquisites,  none  of  whose  sub- 
jects seem  directly  amenable  to  any  power  which  at 
first,  second,  or  third  hand  is  supposed  to  be  respon- 
sible. That  is  the  barest  outline.  To  fill  in  the 
details  (if  any  living  man  knows  them)  would  be  as 
easy  as  to  explain  baseball  to  an  Englishman  or  the 
Eton  Wall  game  to  a  citizen  of  the  United  States. 


A  SERPENT  OF  OLD  NILE  247 

But  it  is  a  fascinating  play.  There  are  Frenchmen 
in  it,  whose  logical  mind  it  offends,  and  they  revenge 
themselves  by  printing  the  finance-reports  and  the 
catalogue  of  the  Bulak  Museum  in  pure  French. 
There  are  Germans  in  it,  whose  demands  must  be 
carefully  weighed — not  that  they  can  by  any  means 
be  satisfied,  but  they  serve  to  block  other  people's. 
There  are  Russians  in  it,  who  do  not  very  much 
matter  at  present  but  will  be  heard  from  later. 
There  are  Italians  and  Greeks  in  it  (both  rather 
pleased  with  themselves  just  now),  full  of  the  higher 
finance  and  the  finer  emotions.  There  are  Egyp- 
tian pashas  in  it,  who  come  back  from  Paris  at  inter- 
vals and  ask  plaintively  to  whom  they  are  supposed 
to  belong.  There  is  His  Highness,  the  Khedive,  in 
it,  and  he  must  be  considered  not  a  little,  and  there 
are  women  in  it,  up  to  their  eyes.  And  there  are 
great  English  cotton  and  sugar  interests,  and  angry 
English  importers  clamouring  to  know  why  they 
cannot  do  business  on  rational  lines  or  get  into  the 
Sudan,  which  they  hold  is  ripe  for  development  if 
the  administration  there  would  only  see  reason. 
Among  these  conflicting  interests  and  amusements 
sits  and  perspires  the  English  official,  whose  job  is 
irrigating  or  draining  or  reclaiming  land  on  behalf 
of  a  trifle  of  ten  million  people,  and  he  finds  himself 
tripped  up  by  skeins  of  intrigue  and  bafflement 
which  may  ramify  through  half  a  dozen  harems  and 
four  consulates.     All  this  makes  for  suavity,  tolera- 


248         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

tion,  and  the  blessed  habit  of  not  being  surprised  at 
anything  whatever. 

Or,  so  it  seemed  to  me,  watching  a  big  dance  at 
one  of  the  hotels.  Every  European  race  and  breed 
and  half  of  the  United  States  were  represented,  but  I 
fancied  I  could  make  out  three  distinct  groupings. 
The  tourists  with  the  steamer-trunk  creases  still 
across  their  dear,  excited  backs;  the  military  and  the 
officials  sure  of  their  partners  beforehand,  and  saying 
clearly  what  ought  to  be  said,  and  a  third  contingent, 
lower-voiced,  softer-footed,  and  keener  eyed  than  the 
other  two,  at  ease,  as  gipsies  are  on  their  own  ground, 
flinging  half-words  in  local  argot  over  shoulders  at 
their  friends,  understanding  on  the  nod  and  moved 
by  springs  common  to  their  clan  only.  For  example, 
a  woman  was  talking  flawless  English  to  her  partner, 
an  English  officer.  Just  before  the  next  dance  began, 
another  woman  beckoned  to  her,  Eastern  fashion, 
all  four  fingers  flicking  downward.  The  first  woman 
crossed  to  a  potted  palm;  the  second  moved  towards 
it,  also,  till  the  two  drew  up,  not  looking  at  each 
other,  the  plant  between  them.  Then  she  who  had 
beckoned  spoke  in  a  strange  tongue  at  the  palm. 
The  first  woman,  still  looking  away,  answered  in  the 
same  fashion  with  a  rush  of  words  that  rattled  like 
buckshot  through  the  stiff  fronds.  Her  tone  had 
nothing  to  do  with  that  in  which  she  greeted  her 
new  partner,  who  came  up  as  the  music  began.  The 
one  was  a  delicious  drawl;  the  other  had  been  the  gut- 


A  SERPENT  OF  OLD  NILE  249 

tural  rasp  and  click  of  the  kitchen  and  the  bazaar. 
So  she  moved  off,  and,  in  a  little,  the  second  woman 
disappeared  into  the  crowd.  Most  likely  it  was  no 
more  than  some  question  of  the  programme  or  dress, 
but  the  prompt,  feline  stealth  and  coolness  of  it, 
the  lightning-quick  return  to  and  from  world-apart 
civilisations  stuck  in  my  memory. 

So  did  the  bloodless  face  of  a  very  old  Turk,  fresh 
from  some  horror  of  assassination  in  Constantinople 
in  which  he,  too,  had  been  nearly  pistolled,  but,  they 
said,  he  had  argued  quietly  over  the  body  of  a  late 
colleague,  as  one  to  whom  death  was  of  no  moment, 
until  the  hysterical  Young  Turks  were  abashed  and 
let  him  get  away — to  the  lights  and  music  of  this  ele- 
gantly appointed  hotel. 

These  modern  "Arabian  Nights"  are  too  hectic 
for  quiet  folk.  I  declined  upon  a  more  rational 
Cairo — the  Arab  city  where  everything  is  as  it  was 
when  Maruf  the  Cobbler  fled  from  Fatima-el-Orra 
and  met  the  djinn  in  the  Adelia  Musjid.  The 
craftsmen  and  merchants  sat  on  their  shopboards, 
a  rich  mystery  of  darkness  behind  them,  and  the 
narrow  gullies  were  polished  to  shoulder-height  by 
the  mere  flux  of  people.  Shod  white  men,  unless 
they  are  agriculturists,  touch  lightly,  with  their 
haj\ds  at  most,  in  passing.  Easterns  lean  and  loll 
and  squat  and  sidle  against  things  as  they  daunder 
along.  When  the  feet  are  bare,  the  whole  body 
thinks.     Moreover,  it  is  unseemly  to  buy  or  to  do 


250         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

aught  and  be  done  with  it.  Only  people  with  tight- 
fitting  clothes  that  need  no  attention  have  time  for 
that.  So  we  of  the  loose  skirt  and  flowing  trousers 
and  slack  slipper  make  full  and  ample  salutations  to 
our  friends,  and  redouble  them  toward  our  ill-wishers, 
and  if  it  be  a  question  of  purchase,  the  stufF  must 
be  fingered  and  appraised  with  a  proverb  or  so, 
and  if  it  be  a  fool  tourist  who  thinks  that  he  cannot 
be  cheated,  O  true  believers!  draw  near  and  witness 
how  we  shall  loot  him. 

But  I  bought  nothing.  The  City  thrust  more 
treasure  upon  me  than  I  could  carry  away.  It 
came  out  of  dark  alleyways  on  tawny  camels  loaded 
with  pots;  on  pattering  asses  half  buried  under  nets 
of  cut  clover;  in  the  exquisitely  modelled  hands  of 
little  children  scurrying  home  from  the  cookshop 
with  the  evening  meal,  chin  pressed  against  the 
platter's  edge  and  eyes  round  with  responsibility 
above  the  pile;  in  the  broken  lights  from  jutting 
rooms  overhead,  where  the  women  lie,  chin  between 
palms,  looking  out  of  windows  not  a  foot  from  the 
floor;  in  every  glimpse  into  every  courtyard,  where 
the  men  smoke  by  the  tank;  in  the  heaps  of  rubbish 
and  rotten  bricks  that  flanked  newly  painted  houses, 
waiting  to  be  built,  some  day,  into  houses  once  more; 
in  the  slap  and  slide  of  the  heelless  red-and-yellow 
slippers  all  around,  and,  above  all,  in  the  mixed 
delicious  smells  of  frying  butter,  Mohammedan 
bread,    kalabs,    leather,    cooking-smoke,    asafetida, 


A  SERPENT  OF  OLD  NILE  251 

peppers,  and  turmeric.  Devils  cannot  abide  the  smell 
of  burning  turmeric,  but  the  right-minded  man  loves 
it.  It  stands  for  evening  that  brings  all  home, 
the  evening  meal,  the  dipping  of  friendly  hands  in 
the  dish,  the  one  face,  the  dropped  veil,  and  the  big, 
guttering  pipe  afterward. 

Praised  be  Allah  for  the  diversity  of  His  creatures 
and  for  the  five  advantages  of  travel  and  for  the 
glories  of  the  cities  of  the  earth!  Harun-al-Raschid, 
in  roaring  Bagdad  of  old,  never  delighted  himself  to 
the  limits  of  such  a  delight  as  was  mine,  that  after- 
noon. It  is  true  that  the  call  to  prayer,  the  cadence 
of  some  of  the  street-cries,  and  the  cut  of  some  of 
the  garments  differed  a  little  from  what  I  had  been 
brought  up  to;  but  for  the  rest,  the  shadow  on  the 
dial  had  turned  back  twenty  degrees  for  me,  and  I 
found  myself  saying,  as  perhaps  the  dead  say  when 
they  have  recovered  their  wits,  "This  is  my  real  world 
again." 

Some  men  are  Mohammedan  by  birth,  some  by 
training,  and  some  by  fate,  but  I  have  never  met  an 
Englishman  yet  who  hated  Islam  and  its  people  as 
I  have  met  Englishmen  who  hated  some  other  faiths. 
Musalmani  azvadani,  as  the  saying  goes — where  there 
are  Mohammedans,  there  is  a  comprehensible  civili- 
sation. 

Then  we  came  upon  a  deserted  mosque  of  pitted 
brick  colonnades  round  a  vast  courtyard  open  to  the 
pale  sky.     It  was  utterly  empty  except  for  its  own 


252         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

proper  spirit,  and  that  caught  one  by  the  throat 
as  one  entered.  Christian  churches  may  compromise 
with  images  and  side-chapels,  where  the  unworthy  or 
abashed  can  traffic  with  accessible  saints.  Islam 
has  but  one  pulpit  and  one  stark  affirmation — living 
or  dying,  one  only — and  where  men  have  repeated 
that  in  red-hot  belief  through  centuries,  the  air  still 
shakes  to  it. 

Some  say  now  that  Islam  is  dying  and  that  no- 
body cares;  others  that,  if  she  withers  in  Europe  and 
Asia,  she  will  renew  herself  in  Africa  and  will  return 
— terrible — after  certain  years,  at  the  head  of  all 
the  nine  sons  of  Ham;  others  dream  that  the  English 
understand  Islam  as  no  one  else  does,  and,  in  years 
to  be,  Islam  will  admit  this  and  the  world  will  be 
changed.  If  you  go  to  the  mosque  Al  Azhar — the 
thousand-year-old  University  of  Cairo — you  will 
be  able  to  decide  for  yourself.  There  is  nothing  to 
see  except  many  courts,  cool  in  hot  weather,  sur- 
rounded by  cliff-like  brick  walls.  Men  come  and 
go  through  dark  doorways,  giving  on  to  yet  darker 
cloisters,  as  freely  as  though  the  place  was  a  bazaar. 
There  are  no  aggressive  educational  appliances. 
The  students  sit  on  the  ground,  and  their  teachers 
instruct  them,  mostly  by  word  of  mouth,  in  grammar, 
syntax,  logic;  al-hisab,  which  is  arithmetic;  al-jab'r 
w' 'al  muqabalah,  which  is  algebra;  at-tafsir,  commen- 
taries on  the  Koran;  and,  last  and  most  troublesome, 
al-ahadisy  traditions,   and   yet   more   commentaries 


A  SERPENT  OF  OLD  NILE  253 

on  the  law  of  Islam,  which  leads  back,  like  every- 
thing, to  the  Koran  once  again.  (For  it  is  written, 
"Truly  the  Quran  is  none  other  than  a  revelation.") 
It  is  a  very  comprehensive  curriculum.  No  man 
can  master  it  entirely,  but  any  can  stay  there  as 
long  as  he  pleases.  The  university  provides  com- 
mons— twenty-five  thousand  loaves  a  day,  I  believe, 
and  there  is  always  a  place  to  lie  down  in  for  such  as 
do  not  desire  a  shut  room  and  a  bed.  Nothing  could 
be  more  simple  or,  given  certain  conditions,  more 
effective.  Close  upon  six  hundred  professors  who 
represent  officially  or  unofficially  every  school  of 
thought,  teach  ten  or  twelve  thousand  students,  who 
draw  from  every  Mohammedan  community,  west 
and  east  between  Manila  and  Morocco,  north  and 
south  between  Kamchatka  and  the  Malay  mosque 
at  Cape  Town.  These  drift  off  to  become  teachers 
of  little  schools,  preachers  at  mosques,  students  of 
the  Law  known  to  millions  (but  rarely  to  Europeans), 
dreamers,  devotees,  or  miracle-workers  in  all  the 
ends  of  the  earth.  The  man  who  interested  me  most 
was  a  red-bearded,  sunk-eyed  mullah  from  the  In- 
dian frontier,  not  likely  to  be  last  at  any  distribution 
of  food,  who  stood  up  like  a  lean  wolf-hound  among 
collies  in  a  little  assembly  at  a  doorway. 

And  there  was  another  mosque,  sumptuously 
carpeted  and  lighted  (which  the  Prophet  did  not 
approve  of),  where  men  prayed  in  the  dull  mutter 
that,    at   times,    mounts    and    increases    under   the 


254         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

domes  like  the  boom  of  drums  or  the  surge  of  a 
hot  hive  before  the  swarm  flings  out.  And  round 
the  corner  of  it,  one  almost  ran  into  Our  inconspicu- 
ous and  wholly  detached  Private  of  Infantry,  his 
tunic  open,  his  cigarette  alight,  leaning  against 
some  railings  and  considering  the  city  below.  Men 
in  forts  and  citadels  and  garrisons  all  the  world  over 
go  up  at  twilight  as  automatically  as  sheep  at  sun- 
down, to  have  a  last  look  round.  They  say  little 
and  return  as  silently  across  the  crunching  gravel, 
detested  by  bare  feet,  to  their  whitewashed  rooms 
and  regulated  lives.  One  of  the  men  told  me  he 
thought  well  of  Cairo.  It  was  interesting.  "Take 
it  from  me,"  he  said,  "there's  a  lot  in  seeing  places, 
because  you  can  remember  'em  afterward." 

He  was  very  right.  The  purple  and  lemon- 
coloured  hazes  of  dusk  and  reflected  day  spread  over 
the  throbbing,  twinkling  streets,  masked  the  great 
outline  of  the  citadel  and  the  desert  hills,  and  con- 
spired to  confuse  and  suggest  and  evoke  memories  till 
Cairo  the  Sorceress  cast  her  proper  shape  and  danced 
before  me  in  the  heart-breaking  likeness  of  every  city 
I  had  known  and  loved,  a  little  farther  up  the  road. 

It  was  a  cruel  double-magic.  For  in  the  very 
hour  that  my  homesick  soul  had  surrendered  itself 
to  the  dream  of  the  shadow  that  had  turned  back 
on  the  dial,  I  realised  all  the  desolate  days  and 
homesickness  of  all  the  men  penned  in  far-ofF  places 
among  strange  sounds  and  smells. 


IV 
Up  the  River 

Once  upon  a  time  there  was  a  murderer  who  got 
off  with  a  life-sentence.  What  impressed  him 
most,  when  he  had  time  to  think,  was  the  frank 
boredom  of  all  who  took  part  in  the  ritual. 

"It  was  just  like  going  to  a  doctor  or  a  dentist," 
he  explained.  "  You  come  to  'em  very  full  of 
your  affairs,  and  then  you  discover  that  it's  only 
part  of  their  daily  work  to  them.  I  expect,"  he 
added,  "I  should  have  found  it  the  same  if — er — 
I'd  gone  on  to  the  finish." 

He  would  have.  Break  into  any  new  Hell  or 
Heaven  and  you  will  be  met  at  its  well-worn  thres- 
hold by  the  bored  experts  in  attendance. 

For  three  weeks  we  sat  on  copiously  chaired  and 
carpeted  decks,  carefully  isolated  from  everything 
that  had  anything  to  do  with  Egypt,  under  chape- 
ronage  of  a  properly  orientalised  dragoman.  Twice 
or  thrice  daily,  our  steamer  drew  up  at  a  mud-bank 
covered  with  donkeys.  Saddles  were  hauled  out  of 
a  hatch  in  our  bows;  the  donkeys  were  dressed,  dealt 
round  like  cards;  we  rode  off  through  crops  or  desert, 
as  the  case  might  be,  were  introduced  in  ringing  tones 

255 


256         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

to  a  temple,  and  were  then  duly  returned  to  our 
bridge  and  our  Baedekers.  For  sheer  comfort,  not 
to  say  padded  sloth,  the  life  was  unequalled,  and  since 
the  bulk  of  our  passengers  were  citizens  of  the 
United  States — Egypt  in  winter  ought  to  be  admitted 
into  the  Union  as  a  temporary  territory — there  was 
no  lack  of  interest.  They  were  overwhelmingly 
women,  with  here  and  there  a  placid  nose-led  hus- 
band or  father,  visibly  suffering  from  congestion  of 
information  about  his  native  city.  I  had  the  joy 
of  seeing  two  such  men  meet.  They  turned  their 
backs  resolutely  on  the  River,  bit  and  lit  cigars,  and 
for  one  hour  and  a  quarter  ceased  not  to  emit  statis- 
tics of  the  industries,  commerce,  manufacture,  trans- 
port, and  journalism  of  their  towns — Los  Angeles, 
let  us  say,  and  Rochester,  N.  Y.  It  sounded  like 
war  between  two  cash-registers. 

One  forgot,  of  course,  that  all  the  dreary  figures 
were  alive  to  them,  and  as  Los  Angeles  spoke  Roch- 
ester visualised.  Next  day  I  met  an  Englishman 
from  the  Soudan  end  of  things,  very  full  of  a  little- 
known  railway  which  had  been  laid  down  in  what 
looked  like  raw  desert,  and  therefore  had  turned  out 
to  be  full  of  paying  freight.  He  was  in  the  full-tide 
of  it  when  Los  Angeles  ranged  alongside  and  cast 
anchor,  fascinated  by  the  mere  roll  of  numbers. 

"How's  that?"  he  cut  in  sharply  at  a  pause. 

He  was  told  how,  and  went  on  to  drain  my  friend 
dry  concerning  that  railroad,  out  of  sheer  fraternal 


UP  THE  RIVER  257 

interest,  as  he  explained,  in  "any  darn  thing  that's 
being  made  anywheres." 

"So  you  see,"  my  friend  went  on,  "we  shall  be 
bringing  Abyssinian  cattle  into  Cairo." 

"On  the  hoof?"  One  quick  glance  at  the  Desert 
ranges. 

"No,  no!  By  rail  and  River.  And  after  that 
we're  going  to  grow  cotton  between  the  Blue  and  the 
White  Nile  and  knock  spots  out  of  the  States." 

"Ha-ow'sthat?" 

"This  way."  The  speaker  spread  his  first  and 
second  fingers  fanwise  under  the  big,  interested 
beak.  "That's  the  Blue  Nile.  And  that's  the 
White.  There's  a  difference  of  so  many  feet  be- 
tween 'em,  an'  in  that  fork  here,  'tween  my  fingers, 
we  shall " 

"/  see.  Irrigate  on  the  strength  of  the  little 
difference  in  the  levels.     How  many  acres?" 

Again  Los  Angeles  was  told.  He  expanded  like  a 
frog  in  a  shower.  "An'  I  thought,"  he  murmured, 
"Egypt  was  all  mummies  and  the  Bible!  /  used  to 
know  something  about  cotton.     Now  we'll  talk." 

All  that  day  the  two  paced  the  deck  with  the  ab- 
sorbed insolence  of  lovers;  and,  lover-like,  each  would 
steal  away  and  tell  me  what  a  splendid  soul  was  his 
companion. 

That  was  one  type;  but  there  were  others — pro- 
fessional men  who  did  not  make  or  sell  things — and 
these  the  hand  of  an  all-exacting  Democracy  seemed 


258         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

to  have  run  into  one  mould.  They  were  not  reticent, 
but  no  matter  whence  they  hailed,  their  talk  was  as 
standardised  as  the  fittings  of  a  Pullman. 

I  hinted  something  of  this  to  a  woman  aboard 
who  was  learned  in  the  sermons  of  either  language. 

"I  think,"  she  began,  "that  the  staleness  you  com- 
plain of " 

"I  never  said  'staleness,'"  I  protested. 

"But  you  thought  it.  The  staleness  you  noticed 
is  due  to  our  men  being  so  largely  educated  by  old 
women — old  maids.  Practically  till  he  goes  to  Col- 
lege, and  not  always  then,  a  boy  can't  get  away  from 
them." 

"Then  what  happens?" 

"The  natural  result.  A  man's  instinct  is  to  teach 
a  boy  to  think  for  himself.  If  a  woman  can't  make  a 
boy  think  as  she  thinks,  she  sits  down  and  cries.  A 
man  hasn't  any  standards.  He  makes  'em.  A 
woman's  the  most  standardized  being  in  the  world. 
She  has  to  be.     Now  d'you  see?" 

"Not  yet." 

"Well,  our  trouble  in  America  is  that  we're  being 
school-marmed  to  death.  You  can  see  it  in  any 
paper  you  pick  up.  What  were  those  men  talking 
about  just  now?" 

"Food  adulteration,  police-reform,  and  beautify- 
ing waste-lots  in  towns,"  I  replied  promptly. 

She  threw  up  her  hands.  "I  knew  it!"  she  cried. 
"Our  great  National  Policy  of  co-educational  house- 


UP  THE  RIVER  259 

keeping!  Ham-frills  and  pillow-shams.  Did  you 
ever  know  a  man  get  a  woman's  respect  by  parading 
around  creation  with  a  dish-clout  pinned  to  his  coat- 
tails?" 

"But  if  his  woman  ord — told  him  to  do  it?"  I 
suggested. 

'Then  she'd  despise  him  the  more  for  doing  it. 
You  needn't  laugh.  You're  coming  to  the  same  sort 
of  thing  in  England." 

I  returned  to  the  little  gathering.  A  woman  was 
talking  to  them  as  one  accustomed  to  talk  from 
birth.  They  listened  with  the  rigid  attention  of 
men  early  trained  to  listen  to,  but  not  to  talk  with, 
women.  She  was,  to  put  it  mildly,  the  mother  of 
all  she-bores,  but  when  she  moved  on,  no  man  ven- 
tured to  say  as  much. 

'That's  what  I  mean  by  being  school-marmed  to 
death,"  said  my  acquaintance  wickedly.  "Why, 
she  bored  'em  stiff;  but  they  are  so  well  brought  up, 
they  didn't  even  know  they  were  bored.  Some  day 
the  American  Man  is  going  to  revolt." 

"And  what'll  the  American  Woman  do?" 
"She'll  sit  and  cry — and  it'll  do  her  good." 
Later  on,  I  met  a  woman  from  a  certain  Western 
State  seeing  God's  great,  happy,  inattentive  world  for 
the  first  time,  and  rather  distressed  that  it  was  not 
like  hers.  She  had  always  understood  that  the 
English  were  brutal  to  their  wives — the  papers  of 
her  State  said  so.     (If  you  only  knew  the  papers  of 


z6o         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

her  State!)  But  she  had  not  noticed  any  scandal- 
ous treatment  so  far,  and  Englishwomen,  whom  she 
admitted  she  would  never  understand,  seemed  to 
enjoy  a  certain  specious  liberty  and  equality;  while 
Englishmen  were  distinctly  kind  to  girls  in  difficulties 
over  their  baggage  and  tickets  on  strange  railways. 
Quite  a  nice  people,  she  concluded,  but  without 
much  sense  of  humour.  One  day,  she  showed  me 
what  looked  like  a  fashion-paper  print  of  a  dress- 
stuff — a  pretty  oval  medallion  of  stars  on  a  striped 
grenadine  background  that  somehow  seemed  familiar. 

"How  nice!     What  is  it?"  I  asked. 

"Our  National  Flag,"  she  replied. 

Indeed.     But  it  doesn't  look  quite " 

'No.  This  is  a  new  design  for  arranging  the 
stars  so  that  they  shall  be  easier  to  count  and  more 
decorative  in  effect.  We're  going  to  take  a  vote  on 
it  in  our  State,  where  we  have  the  franchise.  I  shall 
cast  my  vote  when  I  get  home." 

"Really!     And  how  will  you  vote?" 

"I'm  just  thinking  that  out."  She  spread  the 
picture  on  her  knee  and  considered  it,  head  to  one 
side,  as  though  it  were  indeed  dress  material. 

All  this  while  the  land  of  Egypt  marched  solemnly 
beside  us  on  either  hand.  The  river  being  low,  we 
saw  it  from  the  boat  as  one  long  plinth,  twelve  to 
twenty  feet  high  of  brownish,  purplish  mud,  visibly 
upheld  every  hundred  yards  or  so  by  glistening 
copper  caryatides  in  the  shape  of  naked  men  baling 


UP  THE  RIVER  261 

water  up  to  the  crops  above.  Behind  that  bright 
emerald  line  ran  the  fawn-  or  tiger-coloured  back- 
ground of  desert,  and  a  pale  blue  sky  closed  all. 
There  was  Egypt  even  as  the  Pharaohs,  their  en- 
gineers and  architects,  had  seen  it — land  to  cultivate, 
folk  and  cattle  for  the  work,  and  outside  that  work  no 
distraction  nor  allurement  of  any  kind  whatever, 
save  when  the  dead  were  taken  to  their  place  beyond 
the  limits  of  cultivation.  When  the  banks  grew 
lower,  one  looked  across  as  much  as  two  miles  of 
green-stuff  packed  like  a  toy  Noah's-ark  with  people, 
camels,  goats,  oxen,  buffaloes,  and  an  occasional 
horse.  The  beasts  stood  as  still,  too,  as  the  toys,  be- 
cause they  were  tethered  or  hobbled  each  to  his  own 
half-circle  of  clover,  and  moved  forward  when  that 
was  eaten.  Only  the  very  little  kids  were  loose,  and 
these  played  on  the  flat  mud  roofs  like  kittens. 

No  wonder  "every  shepherd  is  an  abomination  to 
the  Egyptians."  The  dusty,  naked-footed  field- 
tracks  are  cut  down  to  the  last  centimetre  of  grudged 
width;  the  main  roads  are  lifted  high  on  the  flanks 
of  the  canals,  unless  the  permanent-way  of  some 
light  railroad  can  be  pressed  to  do  duty  for  them. 
The  wheat,  the  pale  ripened  tufted  sugar-cane,  the 
millet,  the  barley,  the  onions,  the  fringed  castor-oil 
bushes  jostle  each  other  for  foothold,  since  the 
Desert  will  not  give  them  room;  and  men  chase  the 
falling  Nile  inch  by  inch,  each  dawn,  with  new 
furrowed  melon-beds  on  still  dripping  mud-banks. 


262         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

Administratively,  such  a  land  ought  to  be  a  joy. 
The  people  do  not  emigrate;  all  their  resources  are 
in  plain  sight;  they  are  as  accustomed  as  their  cattle 
to  being  led  about.  All  they  desire,  and  it  has  been 
given  them,  is  freedom  from  murder  and  mutilation, 
rape  and  robbery.  The  rest  they  can  attend  to  in 
their  silent  palm-shaded  villages  where  the  pigeons 
coo  and  the  little  children  play  in  the  dust. 

But  Western  civilisation  is  a  devastating  and  a 
selfish  game.  Like  the  young  woman  from  "our 
State,"  it  says  in  effect:  "I  am  rich.  I've  nothing 
to  do.  I  must  do  something.  I  shall  take  up  social 
reform." 

Just  now  there  is  a  little  social  reform  in  Egypt 
which  is  rather  amusing.  The  Egyptian  cultivator 
borrows  money;  as  all  farmers  must.  This  land 
without  hedge  or  wild-flower  is  his  passion  by  age- 
long inheritance  and  suffering,  by,  in  and  for  which 
he  lives.  He  borrows  to  develop  it  and  to  buy  more 
at  from  £30  to  £200  per  acre,  the  profit  on  which,  when 
all  is  paid,  works  out  at  between  £5  to  £10  per  acre. 
Formerly,  he  borrowed  from  the  local  money-lenders, 
mostly  Greeks,  at  30  per  cent  per  annum  and  over. 
This  rate  is  not  excessive,  so  long  as  public  opinion 
allows  the  borrower  from  time  to  time  to  slay  the 
lender;  but  modern  administration  calls  that  riot 
and  murder.  Some  years  ago,  therefore,  there  was 
established  a  State-guaranteed  Bank  which  lent  to 
the  cultivators  at  eight  per  cent,  and  the  cultivator 


UP  THE  RIVER  263 

zealously  availed  himself  of  that  privilege.  He 
did  not  default  more  than  in  reason,  but  being  a 
farmer,  he  naturally  did  not  pay  up  till  threatened 
with  being  sold  up.  So  he  prospered  and  bought 
more  land,  which  was  his  heart's  desire.  This 
year — 191 3 — the  administration  issued  sudden  orders 
that  no  man  owning  less  than  five  acres  could  borrow 
on  security  of  his  land.  The  matter  interested  me 
directly,  because  I  held  five  hundred  pounds  worth  of 
shares  in  that  State-guaranteed  Bank,  and  more 
than  half  our  clients  were  small  men  of  less  than  five 
acres.  So  I  made  inquiries  in  quarters  that  seemed 
to  possess  information,  and  was  told  that  the  new 
law  was  precisely  on  all-fours  with  the  Homestead 
Act  of  the  United  States  and  France,  and  the  in- 
tentions of  Divine  Providence — or  words  to  that 
effect. 

"But,"  I  asked,  "won't  this  limitation  of  credit 
prevent  the  men  with  less  than  five  acres  from 
borrowing  more  to  buy  more  land  and  getting  on  in 
the  world?" 

"Yes,"  was  the  answer,  "of  course  it  will.  That's 
just  what  we  want  to  prevent.  Half  these  fellows 
ruin  themselves  trying  to  buy  more  land.  We've 
got  to  protect  them  against  themselves." 

That,  alas!  is  the  one  enemy  against  which  no  law 
can  protect  any  son  of  Adam;  since  the  real  reasons 
that  make  or  break  a  man  are  too  absurd  or  too 
obscene  to  be  reached  from  outside.      Then  I  cast 


264         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

about  in  other  quarters  to  discover  what  the  culti- 
vator was  going  to  do  about  it. 

"Oh,  him?"  said  one  of  my  many  informants. 
"He  *s  all  right.  There  are  about  six  ways  of 
evading  the  Act  that  I  know  of.  The  fellah  probably 
knows  another  six.  He  has  been  trained  to  look 
after  himself  since  the  days  of  Rameses.  He  can 
forge  land-transfers  for  one  thing;  borrow  land 
enough  to  make  his  holding  more  than  five  acres  for 
as  long  as  it  takes  to  register  a  loan;  get  money  from 
his  own  women  (yes,  that's  one  result  of  modern 
progress  in  this  land!)  or  go  back  to  his  old  friend  the 
Greek  at  30  per  cent." 

"Then  the  Greek  will  sell  him  up,  and  that  will  be 
against  the  law,  won't  it?"  I  said. 

"Don't  you  worry  about  the  Greek.  He  can  get 
through  any  law  ever  made  if  there's  five  piastres  on 
the  other  side  of  it." 

"Maybe;  but  was  the  Agricultural  Bank  selling 
the  cultivators  up  too  much?" 

"Not  in  the  least.  The  number  of  small  holdings 
is  on  the  increase,  if  anything.  Most  cultivators 
won't  pay  a  loan  until  you  point  a  judgment- 
summons  at  their  head.  They  think  that  shows 
they're  men  of  consequence.  This  swells  the  number 
of  judgment-summons  issued,  but  it  doesn't  mean 
a  land-sale  for  each  summons.  Another  fact  is 
that  in  real  life  some  men  don't  get  on  as  well  as 
others.     Either   they   don't    farm   well   enough,   or 


UP  THE  RIVER  265 

they  take  to  hashish,  or  go  crazy  about  a  girl  and 
borrow  money  for  her,  or — er — something  of  that 
kind,  and  they  are  sold  up.  You  may  have  noticed 
that." 

"I  have.  And  meantime,  what  is  the  fellah 
doing?" 

"Meantime,  the  fellah  has  misread  the  Act — as 
usual.  He  thinks  it's  retrospective,  and  that  he 
needn't  pay  past  debts.  They  may  make  trouble, 
but  I  fancy  your  Bank  will  keep  quiet." 

"Keep  quiet!  With  the  bottom  knocked  out  of 
two-thirds  of  its  business  and — and  my  five  hundred 
pounds  involved!" 

"Is  that  your  trouble?  I  don't  think  your  shares 
will  rise  in  a  hurry;  but  if  you  want  some  fun,  go  and 
talk  to  the  French  about  it." 

This  seemed  as  good  a  way  as  any  of  getting  a 
little  interest.  The  Frenchman  that  I  went  to 
spoke  with  a  certain  knowledge  of  finance  and 
politics  and  the  natural  malice  of  a  logical  race 
against  an  illogical  horde. 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "The  idea  of  limiting  credit 
under  these  circumstances  is  absurd.  But  that  is 
not  all.  People  are  not  frightened,  business  is  not 
upset  by  one  absurd  idea,  but  by  the  possibilities  of 
more." 

"Are  there  any  more  ideas,  then,  that  are  going  to 
be  tried  on  this  country?" 

"Two  or  three,"  he  replied  placidly.     "They  are 


266         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

all  generous;  but  they  are  all  ridiculous.  Egypt  is 
not  a  place  where  one  should  promulgate  ridiculous 
ideas." 

"But  my  shares — my  shares!"  I  cried.  "They 
have  already  dropped  several  points." 

"It  is  possible.  They  will  drop  more.  Then 
they  will  rise." 

"Thank  you.     But  why?" 

"Because  the  idea  is  fundamentally  absurd. 
That  will  never  be  admitted  by  your  people,  but 
there  will  be  arrangements,  accommodations,  ad- 
justments, till  it  is  all  the  same  as  it  used  to  be.  It 
will  be  the  concern  of  the  Permanent  Official — poor 
devil! — to  pull  it  straight.  It  is  always  his  concern. 
Meantime,  prices  will  rise  for  all  things." 

"Why?" 

"Because  the  land  is  the  chief  security  in  Egypt. 
If  a  man  cannot  borrow  on  that  security,  the  rates 
of  interest  will  increase  on  whatever  other  security 
he  offers.  That  will  affect  all  work  and  wages  and 
Government  contracts." 

He  put  it  so  convincingly  and  with  so  many 
historical  illustrations  that  I  saw  whole  perspectives 
of  the  old  energetic  Pharaohs,  masters  of  life  and 
death  along  the  River,  checked  in  mid-career  by 
cold-blooded  accountants  chanting  that  not  even 
the  Gods  themselves  can  make  two  plus  two  more 
than  four.  And  the  vision  ran  down  through  the 
ages  to  one  little  earnest  head  on  a  Cook's  steamer, 


UP  THE  RIVER  267 

bent  sideways  over  the  vital  problem  of  rearranging 
"our  National  Flag"  so  that  it  should  be  "easier  to 
count  the  stars." 

For  the  thousandth  time:     Praised  be  Allah  for 
the  diversity  of  His  creatures! 


V 

Dead  Kings 

The  Swiss  are  the  only  people  who  have  taken  the 
trouble  to  master  the  art  of  hotel-keeping.  Con- 
sequently, in  the  things  that  really  matter — beds, 
baths,  and  victuals — they  control  Egypt;  and  since 
every  land  always  throws  back  to  its  aboriginal  life 
(which  is  why  the  United  States  delight  in  telling 
aged  stories),  any  ancient  Egyptian  would  at  once 
understand  and  join  in  with  the  life  that  roars 
through  the  nickel-plumbed  tourist-barracks  on  the 
river,  where  all  the  world  frolics  in  the  sunshine.  At 
first  sight,  the  show  lends  itself  to  cheap  moralising, 
till  one  recalls  that  one  only  sees  busy  folk  when  they 
are  idle,  and  rich  folk  when  they  have  made  their 
money.  A  citizen  of  the  United  States — his  first 
trip  abroad — pointed  out  a  middle-aged  Anglo- 
Saxon  who  was  relaxing  after  the  manner  of  several 
school-boys. 

"There's  a  sample!"  said  the  Son  of  Hustle 
scornfully.  "  'Tell  me,  he  ever  did  anything  in  his 
life?'1  Unluckily  he  had  pitched  upon  one  who, 
when  he  is  in  collar,  reckons  thirteen  and  a  half 
hours  a  fairish  day's  work. 

268 


DEAD  KINGS  269 

Among  this  assembly  were  men  and  women 
burned  to  an  even  blue-black  tint — civilised  people 
with  bleached  hair  and  sparkling  eyes.  They 
explained  themselves  as  "diggers" — just  diggers, 
and  opened  me  a  new  world.  Granted  that  all 
Egypt  is  one  big  undertaker's  emporium,  what  could 
be  more  fascinating  than  to  get  Government  leave  to 
rummage  in  a  corner  of  it,  to  form  a  little  company 
and  spend  the  cold  weather  trying  to  pay  dividends 
in  the  shape  of  amethyst  necklaces,  lapis  lazuli 
scarabs,  pots  of  pure  gold,  and  priceless  bits  of 
statuary?  Or,  if  one  is  rich,  what  better  fun  than  to 
grub-stake  an  expedition  on  the  supposed  site  of  a 
dead  city  and  see  what  turns  up  ?  There  was  a  big- 
game  hunter  who  had  used  most  of  the  Continent, 
quite  carried  away  by  this  sport. 

"I'm  going  to  take  shares  in  a  city  next  year,  and 
watch  the  digging  myself,"  he  said.  "It  beats 
elephants  to  pieces.  In  this  game  you're  digging  up 
dead  things  and  making  them  alive.  Aren't  you 
going  to  have  a  flutter?" 

He  showed  me  a  seductive  little  prospectus. 
Myself,  I  would  sooner  not  lay  hands  on  a  dead 
man's  kit  or  equipment,  especially  when  he  has  gone 
to  his  grave  in  the  belief  that  the  trinkets  guarantee 
salvation.  Of  course,  there  is  the  other  argument, 
put  forward  by  sceptics,  that  the  Egyptian  was  a 
blatant  self-advertiser,  and  that  nothing  would 
please  him  more  than  the  thought  that  he  was  being 


27o         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

looked  at  and  admired  after  all  these  years.  Still, 
one  might  rob  some  shrinking  soul  who  didn't  see  it 
in  that  light. 

At  the  end  of  spring  the  diggers  flock  back  out  of 
the  Desert  and  exchange  chaff  and  news  in  the 
gorgeous  verandahs.  For  example,  A's  company 
has  made  a  find  of  priceless  stuff,  Heaven  knows  how 
old,  and  is — not  too  meek  about  it.  Company  B, 
less  fortunate,  hints  that  if  only  A  knew  to  what 
extent  their  native  diggers  had  been  stealing  and  dis- 
posing of  the  thefts,  under  their  very  archaeological 
noses,  they  would  not  be  so  happy. 

"Nonsense,"  says  Company  A.  "Our  diggers 
are  above  suspicion.     Besides,  we  watched  'em." 

"Are  they?"  is  the  reply. 

"Well,  next  time  you  are  in  Berlin,  go  to  the 
Museum  and  you'll  see  what  the  Germans  have  got 
hold  of.  It  must  have  come  out  of  your  ground. 
The  Dynasty  proves  it."  So  A's  cup  is  poisoned — 
till  next  year.  No  collector  or  curator  of  a  museum 
should  have  any  moral  scruples  whatever;  and  I 
have  never  met  one  who  had;  though  I  have  been 
informed  by  deeply  shocked  informants  of  four 
nationalities  that  the  Germans  are  the  most  flagrant 
pirates  of  all. 

The  business  of  exploration  is  about  as  romantic 
as  earth-work  on  Indian  railways.  There  are  the 
same  narrow-gauge  trams  and  donkeys,  the  same 
shining    gangs    in    the    borrow-pits    and    the    same 


DEAD  KINGS  271 

skirling  dark-blue  crowds  of  women  and  children 
with  the  little  earth-baskets.  But  the  hoes  are  not 
driven  in,  nor  the  clods  jerked  aside  at  random,  and 
when  the  work  fringes  along  the  base  of  some 
mighty  wall,  men  use  their  hands  carefully.  A 
white  man — or  he  was  white  at  breakfast-time — 
patrols  through  the  continually  renewed  dust-haze. 
Weeks  may  pass  without  a  single  bead,  but  anything 
may  turn  up  at  any  moment,  and  it  is  his  to  answer 
the  shout  of  discovery. 

We  had  the  good  fortune  to  stay  a  while  at  the 
Headquarters  of  the  Metropolitan  Museum  (New 
York)  in  a  valley  riddled  like  a  rabbit-warren  with 
tombs.  Their  stables,  store-houses,  and  servants' 
quarters  are  old  tombs;  their  talk  is  of  tombs,  and 
their  dream  (the  diggers'  dream  always)  is  to  dis- 
cover a  virgin  tomb  where  the  untouched  dead  lie 
with  their  jewels  upon  them.  Four  miles  away  are 
the  wide-winged,  rampant  hotels.  Here  is  nothing 
whatever  but  the  rubbish  of  death  that  died  thou- 
sands of  years  ago,  on  whose  grave  no  green  thing  has 
ever  grown.  Villages,  expert  in  two  hundred  genera- 
tions of  grave-robbing,  cower  among  the  mounds  of 
wastage,  and  whoop  at  the  daily  tourist.  Paths 
made  by  bare  feet  run  from  one  half-tomb,  half-mud- 
heap  to  the  next,  not  much  more  distinct  than  snail 
smears,  but  they  have  been  used  since.     .     .     . 

Time  is  a  dangerous  thing  to  play  with.  That 
morning    the    concierge    had    toiled    for    us    among 


272         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

steamer-sailings  to  see  if  we  could  save  three  days. 
That  evening  we  sat  with  folk  for  whom  Time  had 
stood    still    since   the    Ptolemies.     I    wondered,    at 
first,  how  it  concerned  them  or  any  man  if  such  and 
such  a  Pharaoh  had  used  to  his  own  glory  the  plinths 
and   columns   of  such    another   Pharaoh   before   or 
after   Melchizedek.     Their   whole   background   was 
too  inconceivably  remote  for  the  mind  to  work  on. 
But  the  next  morning  we  were  taken  to  the  painted 
tomb  of  a  noble — a  Minister  of  Agriculture — who 
died  four  or  five  thousand  years  ago.     He  said  to  me, 
in    so   many   words:     "Observe!     I   was   very   like 
your  friend,  the  late  Mr.   Samuel   Pepys,  of  your 
Admiralty.     I   took   an   enormous   interest   in   life, 
which  I  most  thoroughly  enjoyed,  on  its  human  and 
on  its  spiritual  side.     I  do  not  think  you  will  find 
many  departments  of  State   better   managed  than 
mine,  or  a  better-kept  house,  or  a  nicer  set  of  young 
people.     .     .     .     My    daughters!     The    eldest,    as 
you  can  see,  takes  after  her  mother.     The  youngest, 
my  favourite,  is  supposed  to  favour  me.     Now  I  will 
show  you  all  the  things  that  I  did,  and  delighted  in, 
till  it  was  time  for  me  to  present  my  accounts  else- 
where."    And  he  showed   me,   detail  by  detail,   in 
colour  and   in   drawing,   his   cattle,   his  horses,   his 
crops,    his   tours    in   the    district,    his    accountants 
presenting   the    revenue    returns,    and    he    himself, 
busiest  of  the  busy,  in  the  good  day. 

But  when  we  left  that  broad,  gay  ante-room  and 


DEAD  KINGS  273 

came  to  the  narrower  passage  where  once  his  body 
had  lain  and  where  all  his  doom  was  portrayed,  I 
could  not  follow  him  so  well.  I  did  not  see  how  he, 
so  experienced  in  life,  could  be  cowed  by  friezes  of 
brute-headed  apparitions  or  satisfied  by  files  of  re- 
peated figures.  He  explained,  something  to  this  effect : 
"We  live  on  the  River — a  line  without  breadth  or 
thickness.  Behind  us  is  the  Desert,  which  nothing 
can  affect;  whither  no  man  goes  till  he  is  dead. 
(One  does  not  use  good  agricultural  ground  for 
cemeteries.)  Practically,  then,  we  only  move  in  two 
dimensions — up  stream  or  down.  Take  away  the 
Desert,  which  we  don't  consider  any  more  than  a 
healthy  man  considers  death,  and  you  will  see  that 
we  have  no  background  whatever.  Our  world  is  all 
one  straight  bar  of  brown  or  green  earth,  and,  for 
some  months,  mere  sky-reflecting  water  that  wipes 
out  everything.  You  have  only  to  look  at  the 
Colossi  to  realize  how  enormously  and  extravagantly 
man  and  his  works  must  scale  in  such  a  country.  Re- 
member, too,  that  our  crops  are  sure,  and  our  life  is 
very,  very  easy.  Above  all,  we  have  no  neighbours. 
That  is  to  say,  we  must  give  out,  for  we  cannot  take 
in.  Now,  I  put  it  to  you,  what  is  left  for  a  priest 
with  imagination,  except  to  develop  ritual  and 
multiply  gods  on  friezes?  Unlimited  leisure,  limited 
space  of  two  dimensions,  divided  by  the  hypnotising 
line  of  the  River,  and  bounded  by  visible,  unalterable 
death — must,  ipso  facto " 


274         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

"Even  so,"  I  interrupted.  "I  do  not  comprehend 
your  gods — your  direct  worship  of  beast,  for  in- 
stance?" 

"You  prefer  the  indirect?  The  worship  of 
Humanity  with  a  capital  H?  My  gods,  or  what  I 
saw  in  them,  contented  me." 

"What  did  you  see  in  your  gods  as  affecting  belief 
and  conduct?" 

"You  know  the  answer  to  the  riddle  of  the 
Sphinx?" 

"No,"  I  murmured.     "What  is  it?" 

"'All  sensible  men  are  of  the  same  religion,  but  no 
sensible  man  ever  tells,"'  he  replied.  With  that  I 
had  to  be  content,  for  the  passage  ended  in  solid 
rock. 

There  were  other  tombs  in  the  valley,  but  the 
owners  were  dumb,  except  one  Pharaoh,  who  from 
the  highest  motives  had  broken  with  the  creeds  and 
instincts  of  his  country,  and  so  had  all  but  wrecked 
it.  One  of  his  discoveries  was  an  artist,  who  saw 
men  not  on  one  plane  but  modelled  full  or  three- 
quarter  face,  with  limbs  suited  to  their  loads  and 
postures.  His  vividly  realized  stuff  leaped  to  the  eye 
out  of  the  acreage  of  low-relief  in  the  old  convention, 
and  I  applauded  as  a  properly  brought  up  tourist 
should. 

"Mine  was  a  fatal  mistake,"  Pharaoh  Ahkenaton 
sighed  in  my  ear.  "I  mistook  the  conventions  of 
life  for  the  realities." 


DEAD  KINGS  275 


iC 


cAh,  those  soul-crippling  conventions!"  I  cried. 

"You  mistake  me,"  he  answered  more  stiffly.  "I 
was  so  sure  of  their  reality  that  I  thought  that  they 
were  really  lies,  whereas  they  were  only  invented  to 
cover  the  raw  facts  of  life." 

"Ah,  those  raw  facts  of  life!"  I  cried,  still  louder; 
for  it  is  not  often  that  one  has  a  chance  of  impressing 
a  Pharaoh.  "We  must  face  them  with  open  eyes 
and  an  open  mind!     Did  you?" 

"I  had  no  opportunity  of  avoiding  them,"  he 
replied.     "I  broke  every  convention  in  my  land." 

"Oh,  noble!     And  what  happened?" 

"What  happens  when  you  strip  the  cover  off  a 
hornet's  nest?  The  raw  fact  of  life  is  that  mankind 
is  just  a  little  lower  than  the  angels,  and  the  conven- 
tions are  based  on  that  fact  in  order  that  men  may 
become  angels.  But  if  you  begin,  as  I  did,  by  the 
convention  that  men  are  angels  they  will  assuredly 
become  bigger  beasts  than  ever." 

"That,"  I  said  firmly,  "is  altogether  out-of-date. 
You  should  have  brought  a  larger  mentality,  a  more 
vital  uplift,  and — er — all  that  sort  of  thing,  to  bear 
on — all  that  sort  of  thing,  you  know." 

"I  did,"  said  Ahkenaton  gloomily.  "It  broke 
me!"     And  he,  too,  went  dumb  among  the  ruins. 

There  is  a  valley  of  rocks  and  stones  in  every 
shade  of  red  and  brown,  called  the  Valley  of  the 
Kings,  where  a  little  oil-engine  coughs  behind  its 
hand  all  day  long,  grinding  electricity  to  light  the 


276         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

faces  of  dead  Pharaohs  a  hundred  feet  underground. 
All  down  the  valley,  during  the  tourist  season,  stand 
charabancs  and  donkeys  and  sand-carts,  with  here 
and  there  exhausted  couples  who  have  dropped  out 
of  the  processions  and  glisten  and  fan  themselves  in 
some  scrap  of  shade.  Along  the  sides  of  the  valley 
are  the  tombs  of  the  kings,  as  it  might  be  neatly 
numbered,  mining  adits  with  concrete  steps  leading 
up  to  them,  and  iron  grilles  that  lock  of  nights,  and 
doorkeepers  of  the  Department  of  Antiquities 
demanding  the  proper  tickets.  One  enters,  and 
from  deeps  below  deeps  hears  the  voice  of  dragomans 
booming  through  the  names  and  titles  of  the 
illustrious  and  thrice-puissant  dead.  Rock-cut  steps 
go  down  into  hot,  still  darkness,  passages  twist  and 
are  led  over  blind  pits  which,  men  say,  the  wise 
builders  childishly  hoped  would  be  taken  for  the 
real  tombs  by  thieves  to  come.  Up  and  down  these 
alley-ways  clatter  all  the  races  of  Europe  with  a  solid 
backing  of  the  United  States.  Their  footsteps  are 
suddenly  blunted  on  the  floor  of  a  hall  paved  with 
immemorial  dust  that  will  never  dance  in  any  wind. 
They  peer  up  at  the  blazoned  ceilings,  stoop  down  to 
the  minutely  decorated  walls,  crane  and  follow  the 
sombre  splendours  of  a  cornice,  draw  in  their  breaths 
and  climb  up  again  to  the  fierce  sunshine  to  redive 
into  the  next  adit  on  their  programme.  What  they 
think  proper  to  say,  they  say  aloud — and  some  of  it 
is  very  interesting.     What  they  feel  you  can  guess 


DEAD  KINGS  277 

from  a  certain  haste  in  their  movements — something 
between  the  shrinking  modesty  of  a  man  under  fire 
and  the  Hadn't-we-better-be-getting-on  attitude  of 
visitors  to  a  mine.  After  all,  it  is  not  natural  for 
man  to  go  underground  except  for  business  or  for  the 
last  time.  He  is  conscious  of  the  weight  of  mother- 
earth  overhead,  and  when  to  her  expectant  bulk  is 
added  the  whole  beaked,  horned,  winged,  and 
crowned  hierarchy  of  a  lost  faith  flaming  at  every 
turn  of  his  eye,  he  naturally  wishes  to  move  away. 
Even  the  sight  of  a  very  great  king  indeed,  sar- 
cophagused  under  electric  light  in  a  hall  full  of  most 
fortifying  pictures,  does  not  hold  him  too  long. 

Some  men  assert  that  the  crypt  of  St.  Peter's, 
with  only  nineteen  centuries  bearing  down  on  the 
groining,  and  the  tombs  of  early  popes  and  kings  all 
about,  is  more  impressive  than  the  Valley  of  the 
Kings  because  it  explains  how  and  out  of  what  an 
existing  creed  grew.  But  the  Valley  of  the  Kings 
explains  nothing  except  that  most  terrible  line  in 
Macbeth: 

To  the  last  syllable  of  recorded  time. 

Earth  opens  her  dry  lips  and  says  it. 

In  one  of  the  tombs  there  is  a  little  chamber  whose 
ceiling,  probably  because  of  a  fault  in  the  rock,  could 
not  be  smoothed  off  like  the  others.  So  the  decorator, 
very  cunningly,  covered  it  with  a  closely  designed 
cloth-pattern — just  such  a  chintz-like  piece  of  stuff 


278         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

as,  in  real  life,  one  would  use  to  underhang  a  rough 
roof  with.  He  did  it  perfectly,  down  there  in  the 
dark,  and  went  his  way.  Thousands  of  years  later, 
there  was  born  a  man  of  my  acquaintance  who,  for 
good  and  sufficient  reason,  had  an  almost  insane 
horror  of  anything  in  the  nature  of  a  ceiling-cloth. 
He  used  to  make  excuses  for  not  going  into  the  dry 
goods  shops  at  Christmas,  when  hastily  enlarged 
annexes  are  hidden,  roof  and  sides,  with  embroideries. 
Perhaps  a  snake  or  a  lizard  had  dropped  on  his 
mother  from  the  roof  before  he  was  born;  perhaps  it 
was  the  memory  of  some  hideous  fever-bout  in  a 
tent.  At  any  rate,  that  man's  idea  of  The  Torment 
was  a  hot,  crowded  underground  room,  underhung 
with  patterned  cloths.  Once  in  his  life  at  a  city  in 
the  far  north,  where  he  had  to  make  a  speech,  he  met 
that  perfect  combination.  They  led  him  up  and 
down  narrow,  crowded,  steam-heated  passages,  till 
they  planted  him  at  last  in  a  room  without  visible 
windows  (by  which  he  knew  he  was  underground), 
and  directly  beneath  a  warm-patterned  ceiling-cloth 
— rather  like  a  tent-lining.  And  there  he  had  to  say 
his  say,  while  panic  terror  sat  in  his  throat.  The 
second  time  was  in  the  Yalley  of  the  Kings,  where 
very  similar  passages,  crowded  with  people,  led  him 
into  a  room  cut  of  rock  fathoms  underground,  with 
what  looked  like  a  sagging  chintz  cloth  not  three  feet 
above  his  head. 

"The  man  I'd  like  to  catch,"  he  said  when  he 


DEAD  KINGS  279 

came  outside  again,  "is  that  decorator-man.  D'you 
suppose  he  meant  to  produce  that  effect?" 

Every  man  has  his  private  terrors,  other  than 
those  of  his  own  conscience.  From  what  I  saw 
in  the  Valley  of  the  Kings,  the  Egyptians  seem 
to  have  known  this  some  time  ago.  They  certainly 
have  impressed  it  on  most  unexpected  people.  I 
heard  two  voices  down  a  passage  talking  tegether  as 
follows : 

She.  I  guess  we  weren't  ever  meant  to  see  these 
old  tombs  from  inside,  anyway. 

He.     How  so  ? 

She.  For  one  thing,  they  believe  so  hard  in  being 
dead.  Of  course,  their  outlook  on  spiritual  things 
wasn't  as  broad  as  ours. 

He.  Well,  there's  no  danger  of  our  being  led  away 
by  it.  Did  you  buy  that  alleged  scarab  off  the  drag- 
oman this  morning? 


VI 
The  Face  of  the  Desert 

Going  up  the  Nile  is  like  running  the  gauntlet 
before  Eternity.  Till  one  has  seen  it,  one  does 
not  realise  the  amazing  thinness  of  that  little  damp 
trickle  of  life  that  steals  along  undefeated  through 
the  jaws  of  established  death.  A  rifle-shot  would 
cover  the  widest  limits  of  cultivation,  a  bow-shot 
would  reach  the  narrower.  Once  beyond  them  a 
man  may  carry  his  next  drink  with  him  till  he 
reaches  Cape  Blanco  on  the  west  (where  he  may 
signal  for  one  from  a  passing  Union  Castle  boat)  or 
the  Karachi  Club  on  the  east.  Say  four  thousand 
dry  miles  to  the  left  hand  and  three  thousand  to 
the  right. 

The  weight  of  the  Desert  is  on  one,  every  day  and 
every  hour.  At  morning,  when  the  cavalcade 
tramps  along  in  the  rear  of  the  tulip-like  dragoman, 
She  says:  "I  am  here — just  beyond  that  ridge  of 
pink  sand  that  you  are  admiring.  Come  along, 
pretty  gentleman,  and  I'll  tell  you  your  fortune." 
But  the  dragoman  says  very  clearly:  "Please,  sar, 
do  not  separate  yourself  at  all  from  the  main  body," 
which,  the  Desert  knows  well,  you  had  no  thought 

280 


THE  FACE  OF  THE  DESERT         281 

of  doing.  At  noon,  when  the  stewards  rummage 
out  lunch-drinks  from  the  dewy  ice-chest,  the  Desert 
whines  louder  than  the  well-wheels  on  the  bank:  "I 
am  here,  only  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away.  For  mercy's 
sake,  pretty  gentleman,  spare  a  mouthful  of  that 
prickly  whisky-and-soda  you  are  lifting  to  your 
lips.  There's  a  white  man  a  few  hundred  miles  off, 
dying  on  my  lap  of  thirst — thirst  that  you  cure  with  a 
rag  dipped  in  lukewarm  water  while  you  hold  him 
down  with  the  one  hand,  and  he  thinks  he  is  cursing 
you  aloud,  but  he  isn't,  because  his  tongue  is  outside 
his  mouth  and  he  can't  get  it  back.  Thank  youy 
my  noble  captain!"  For  naturally  one  tips  half  the 
drink  over  the  rail  with  the  ancient  prayer:  "May 
it  reach  him  who  needs  it,"  and  turns  one's  back  on 
the  pulsing  ridges  and  fluid  horizons  that  are  begin- 
ning their  mid-day  mirage-dance. 

At  evening  the  Desert  obtrudes  again — tricked 
out  as  a  Nautch  girl  in  veils  of  purple,  saffron,  gold- 
tinsel,  and  grass-green.  She  postures  shamelessly 
before  the  delighted  tourists  with  woven  skeins  of 
homeward-flying  pelicans,  fringes  of  wild  duck,  black 
spotted  on  crimson,  and  cheap  jewellery  of  opal 
clouds.  "Notice  Me!"  She  cries,  like  any  other 
worthless  woman.  "Admire  the  play  of  My  mobile 
features — the  revelations  of  My  multi-coloured  soul! 
Observe  My  allurements  and  potentialities.  Thrill 
while  I  stir  you!"  So  She  floats  through  all  Her 
changes  and  retires  upstage  into  the  arms  of  the 


282         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

dusk.  But  at  midnight  She  drops  all  pretence 
and  bears  down  in  Her  natural  shape,  which  depends 
upon  the  conscience  of  the  beholder  and  his  distance 
from  the  next  white  man. 

You  will  observe  in  the  Benedicite  Omnia  Opera 
that  the  Desert  is  the  sole  thing  not  enjoined  to 
"bless  the  Lord,  praise  Him  and  magnify  Him  for 
ever."  This  is  because  when  our  illustrious  father, 
the  Lord  Adam  and  his  august  consort,  the  Lady 
Eve,  were  expelled  from  Eden,  Eblis  the  Accursed, 
fearful  lest  mankind  should  return  ultimately  to  the 
favour  of  Allah,  set  himself  to  burn  and  lay  waste 
all  the  lands  east  and  west  of  Eden. 

Oddly  enough,  the  Garden  of  Eden  is  almost 
the  exact  centre  of  all  the  world's  deserts,  counting 
from  Gobi  to  Timbuctoo;  and  all  that  land  qua  land 
is  "dismissed  from  the  mercy  of  God."  Those  who 
use  it  do  so  at  their  own  risk.  Consequently  the 
Desert  produces  her  own  type  of  man  exactly  as  the 
sea  does.  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  meet  one 
sample,  aged  perhaps  twenty-five.  His  work  took 
him  along  the  edge  of  the  Red  Sea,  where  men  on 
swift  camels  come  to  smuggle  hashish,  and  some- 
times guns,  from  dhows  that  put  in  to  any  convenient 
beach.  These  smugglers  must  be  chased  on  still 
swifter  camels,  and  since  the  wells  are  few  and 
known,  the  game  is  to  get  ahead  of  them  and  occupy 
their  drinking-places. 

But  they  may  skip  a  well  or  so,  and  do  several 


THE  FACE  OF  THE  DESERT         283 

days'  march  in  one.  Then  their  pursuer  must  take 
e'en  greater  risks  and  make  crueller  marches  that 
the  Law  may  be  upheld.  The  one  thing  in  the  Law's 
favour  is  that  hashish  smells  abominably — worse 
than  a  heated  camel — so,  when  they  range  alongside, 
no  time  is  lost  in  listening  to  lies.  It  was  not  told 
to  me  how  they  navigate  themselves  across  the 
broken  wastes,  or  by  what  arts  they  keep  alive  in  the 
dust-storms  and  heat.  That  was  taken  for  granted, 
and  the  man  who  took  it  so  considered  himself  the 
most  commonplace  of  mortals.  He  was  deeply 
moved  by  the  account  of  a  new  aerial  route  which 
the  French  are  laying  out  somewhere  in  the  Sahara 
over  a  waterless  stretch  of  four  hundred  miles,  where 
if  the  aeroplane  is  disabled  between  stations  the 
pilot  will  most  likely  die  and  dry  up  beside  it.  To 
do  the  Desert  justice,  she  rarely  bothers  to  wipe  out 
evidence  of  a  kill.  There  are  places  in  the  Desert, 
men  say,  where  even  now  you  come  across  the  dead 
of  old  battles,  all  as  light  as  last  year's  wasps'  nests, 
laid  down  in  swathes  or  strung  out  in  flight,  with, 
here  and  there,  the  little  sparkling  lines  of  the  emp- 
tied cartridge-cases  that  dropped  them. 

There  are  valleys  and  ravines  that  the  craziest 
smugglers  do  not  care  to  refuge  in  at  certain  times 
of  the  year;  as  there  are  rest-houses  where  one's 
native  servants  will  not  stay  because  they  are 
challenged  on  their  way  to  the  kitchen  by  sentries 
of  old  Soudanese  regiments  which  have  long  gone 


284         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

over  to  Paradise.  And  of  voices  and  warnings 
and  outcries  behind  rocks  there  is  no  end.  These 
last  arise  from  the  fact  that  men  very  rarely  live 
in  a  spot  so  utterly  still  that  they  can  hear  the 
murmuring  race  of  the  blood  over  their  own  ear- 
drums. Neither  ship,  prairie,  nor  forest  gives  that 
silence.  I  went  out  to  find  it  once,  when  our  steamer 
tied  up  and  the  rest  of  them  had  gone  to  see  a  sight, 
but  I  never  dared  venture  more  than  a  mile  from  our 
funnel-smoke.  At  that  point  I  came  upon  a  hill 
honey-combed  with  graves  that  held  a  multitude  of 
paper-white  skulls,  all  grinning  cheerfully  like  am- 
bassadors of  the  Desert.  But  I  did  not  accept  their 
invitation.  They  had  told  me  that  all  the  little 
devils  learn  to  draw  in  the  Desert,  which  explains  the 
elaborate  and  purposeless  detail  that  fills  it.  None 
but  devils  could  think  of  etching  every  rock  outcrop 
with  wind-lines,  or  skinning  it  down  to  its  glistening 
nerves  with  sand-blasts;  of  arranging  hills  in  the 
likeness  of  pyramids  and  sphinxes  and  wrecked  town- 
suburbs;  of  covering  the  space  of  half  an  English 
county  with  sepia  studies  of  interlacing  and  recross- 
ing  ravines,  dongas,  and  nullahs,  each  an  exposition 
of  much  too  clever  perspective;  and  of  wiping  out  the 
half-finished  work  with  a  wash  of  sand  in  three 
tints,  only  to  pick  it  up  again  in  silver-point  on  the 
horizon's  edge.  This  they  do  in  order  to  make  lost 
travellers  think  they  can  recognize  landmarks  and, 
run  about  identifying  them  till  the  madness  comes. 


THE  FACE  OF  THE  DESERT         285 

The  Desert  is  all  devil-device — as  you  might  say 
"blasted  cleverness" — crammed  with  futile  works, 
always  promising  something  fresh  round  the  next 
corner,  always  leading  out  through  heaped  decora- 
tion and  over-insistent  design  into  equal  barrenness. 

There  was  a  morning  of  mornings  when  we  lay  op- 
posite the  rock-hewn  Temple  of  Abu-Simbel,  where 
four  great  figures,  each  sixty  feet  high,  sit  with  their 
hands  on  their  knees  waiting  for  Judgment  Day. 
At  their  feet  is  a  little  breadth  of  blue-green  crop; 
they  seem  to  hold  back  all  the  weight  of  the  Desert 
behind  them,  which,  none  the  less,  lips  over  at  one 
side  in  a  cataract  of  vividest  orange  sand.  The  tour- 
ist is  recommended  to  see  the  sunrise  here,  either 
from  within  the  temple  where  it  falls  on  a  certain  altar 
erected  by  Rameses  in  his  own  honour,  or  from  with- 
out where  another  Power  takes  charge. 

The  stars  had  paled  when  we  began  our  watch; 
the  river-birds  were  just  whispering  over  their 
toilettes  in  the  uncertain  purplish  light.  Then 
the  river  dimmered  up  like  pewter;  the  line  of  the 
ridge  behind  the  Temple  showed  itself  against 
a  milkiness  in  the  sky;  one  felt  rather  than  saw 
that  there  were  four  figures  in  the  pit  of  gloom  below 
it.  These  blocked  themselves  out,  huge  enough, 
but  without  any  special  terror,  while  the  glorious 
ritual  of  the  Eastern  dawn  went  forward.  Some 
reed  of  the  bank  revealed  itself  by  reflection,  black  on 
silver;  arched  wings  flapped  and  jarred  the  still  water 


286         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

to  splintered  glass;  the  desert  ridge  turned  to  topaz, 
and  the  four  figures  stood  clear,  yet  without  shadow- 
ing, from  their  background.  The  stronger  light 
flooded  them  red  from  head  to  foot,  and  they  became 
alive — as  horridly  and  tensely  yet  blindly  alive  as 
pinioned  men  in  the  death-chair  before  the  current 
is  switched  on.  One  felt  that  if  by  any  miracle  the 
dawn  could  be  delayed  a  second  longer,  they  would 
tear  themselves  free,  and  leap  forth  to  heaven  knows 
what  sort  of  vengeance.  But  that  instant  the  full 
sun  pinned  them  in  their  places — nothing  more  than 
statues  slashed  with  light  and  shadow — and  another 
day  got  to  work. 

A  few  yards  to  the  left  of  the  great  images,  close 
to  the  statue  of  an  Egyptian  princess,  whose  face 
was  the  very  face  of  "She,"  there  was  a  marble 
slab  over  the  grave  of  an  English  officer  killed  in  a 
fight  against  dervishes  nearly  a  generation  ago. 

From  Abu  Simbel  to  Wady  Haifa  the  river,  es- 
caped from  the  domination  of  the  Pharaohs,  begins 
to  talk  about  dead  white  men.  Thirty  years  ago, 
young  English  officers  in  India  lied  and  intrigued 
furiously  that  they  might  be  attached  to  expeditions 
whose  bases  were  sometimes  at  Suakim,  sometimes 
quite  in  the  desert  air,  but  all  of  whose  deeds  are 
now  quite  forgotten.  Occasionally  the  dragoman, 
waving  a  smooth  hand  east  or  south-easterly,  will 
speak  of  some  fight.  Then  every  one  murmurs: 
"Oh  yes.     That  was  Gordon,  of  course,"  or  "Was 


THE  FACE  OF  THE  DESERT         287 

that  before  or  after  Omdurman?"  But  the  river 
is  much  more  precise.  As  the  boat  quarters  the 
falling  stream  like  a  puzzled  hound,  all  the  old  names 
spurt  up  again  under  the  paddle-wheels — "Hicks' 
army — Val  Baker — El  Teb — Tokar — Tamai — Tara- 
nieb — and  Osman  Digna!"  Her  head  swings  round 
for  another  slant:  "We  cannot  land  English  or  Indian 
troops;  if  consulted,  recommend  abandonment  of  the 
Soudan  within  certain  limits."  That  was  my  Lord 
Granville  chirruping  to  the  advisers  of  His  Highness 
the  Khedive,  and  the  sentence  comes  back  as  crisp  as 
when  it  first  shocked  one  in  '84.  Next — here  is  a 
long  reach  between  flooded  palm  trees — next,  of 
course,  comes  Gordon — and  a  delightfully  mad  Irish 
war  correspondent  who  was  locked  up  with  him  in 
Khartoum.  Gordon — eighty-four — eighty-five — the 
Suakim-Berber  Railway  really  begun  and  quite  as 
really  abandoned.  Korti — Abu  Klea — the  Desert 
Column — a  steamer  called  the  Safieh,  not  the  Condor, 
which  rescued  two  other  steamers  wrecked  on  their 
way  back  from  a  Khartoum  in  the  red  hands  of  the 
Mahdi  of  those  days.  Then — the  smooth  glide  over 
deep  water  continues — another  Suakim  expedition 
with  a  great  deal  of  Osman  Digna  and  renewed  at- 
tempts to  build  the  Suakim-Berber  Railway.  "Hash- 
in,"  say  the  paddle-wheels,  slowing  all  of  a  sudden — 
"MacNeil's  Zareba — the  15th  Sikhs  and  another 
native  regiment — Osman  Digna  in  great  pride  and 
power,  and  Wady  Haifa  a  frontier  town.     Tamai, 


288         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

once  more;  another  siege  of  Suakim:  Gemaiza; 
Handub;  Trinkitat,  and  Tokar — 1887." 

The  river  recalls  the  names;  the  mind  at  once 
brings  up  the  face  and  every  trick  of  speech  of  some 
youth  met  for  a  few  hours,  maybe,  in  a  train  on  the 
way  to  Egypt  of  the  old  days.  Both  name  and  face 
had  utterly  vanished  from  one's  memory  till  then. 

It  was  another  generation  that  picked  up  the 
ball  ten  years  later  and  touched  down  in  Khartoum. 
Several  people  aboard  the  Cook  boat  had  been  to 
that  city.  They  all  agreed  that  the  hotel  charges 
were  very  high,  but  that  you  could  buy  the  most 
delightful  curiosities  in  the  native  bazaar.  But 
I  do  not  like  bazaars  of  the  Egyptian  kind,  since 
a  discovery  I  made  at  Assouan.  There  was  an 
old  man — a  Mussulman — who  pressed  me  to  buy 
some  truck  or  other,  not  with  the  villainous  cama- 
raderie that  generations  of  low-caste  tourists  have 
taught  the  people;  nor  yet  with  the  cosmopolitan 
lighthandedness  of  appeal  which  the  town-bred 
Egyptian  picks  up  much  too  quickly;  but  with  a 
certain  desperate  zeal,  foreign  to  his  whole  creed  and 
nature.  He  fingered,  he  implored,  he  fawned  with 
an  unsteady  eye,  and  while  I  wondered  I  saw  behind 
him  the  puffy  pink  face  of  a  fezzed  Jew,  watching 
him  as  a  stoat  watches  a  rabbit.  When  he  moved  the 
Jew  followed  and  took  position  at  a  commanding 
angle.  The  old  man  glanced  from  me  to  him  and 
renewed    his    solicitations.     So    one    could    imagine 


THE  FACE  OF  THE  DESERT         289 

an  elderly  hare  thumping  wildly  on  a  tambourine 
with  the  stoat  behind  him.  They  told  me  after- 
wards that  Jews  own  most  of  the  stalls  in  Assouan 
bazaar,  the  Mussulmans  working  for  them,  since 
tourists  need  Oriental  colour.  Never  having  seen  or 
imagined  a  Jew  coercing  a  Mussulman,  this  colour 
was  new  and  displeasing  to  me. 


VII 
The  Riddle  of  Empire 

At  Halfa  one  feels  the  first  breath  of  a  frontier. 
Here  the  Egyptian  Government  retires  into  the 
background,  and  even  the  Cook  steamer  does  not 
draw  up  in  the  exact  centre  of  the  postcard.  At 
the  telegraph-office,  too,  there  are  traces,  diluted 
but  quite  recognizable,  of  military  administration. 
Nor  does  the  town,  in  any  way  or  place  whatever, 
smell — which  is  proof  that  it  is  not  looked  after 
on  popular  lines.  There  is  nothing  to  see  in  it 
any  more  than  there  is  in  Hulk  C.  60,  late  of  her 
Majesty's  troopship  Himalaya,  now  a  coal-hulk 
in  the  Hamoaze  at  Plymouth.  A  river-front,  a 
narrow  terraced  river-walk  of  semi-oriental  houses, 
barracks,  a  mosque,  and  half-a-dozen  streets  at 
right  angles,  the  Desert  racing  up  to  the  end  of 
each,  make  all  the  town.  A  mile  or  so  up  stream 
under  palm  trees  are  bungalows  of  what  must 
have  been  cantonments,  some  machinery  repair- 
shops,  and  odds  and  ends  of  railway  track.  It  is 
all  as  paltry  a  collection  of  whitewashed  houses, 
pitiful  gardens,  dead  walls,  and  trodden  waste 
spaces   as  one  would  wish  to   find   anywhere;   and 

290 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  EMPIRE  291 

every  bit  of  it  quivers  with  the  remembered  life  of 
armies  and  river-fleets,  as  the  finger-bowl  rings  when 
the  rubbing  finger  is  lifted.  The  most  unlikely  men 
have  done  time  there;  stores  by  the  thousand  ton 
have  been  rolled  and  pushed  and  hauled  up  the 
banks  by  tens  of  thousands  of  scattered  hands;  hos- 
pitals have  pitched  themselves  there,  expanded  enor- 
mously, shrivelled  up  and  drifted  away  with  the 
drifting  regiments;  railway  sidings  by  the  mile  have 
been  laid  down  and  ripped  up  again,  as  the  need 
changed,  and  utterly  wiped  out  by  the  sand. 

Haifa  has  been  the  rail-head,  Army  Headquarters, 
and  hub  of  a  universe — the  one  place  where  a 
man  could  make  sure  of  buying  tobacco  and  sar- 
dines, or  could  hope  for  letters  for  himself  and 
medical  attendance  for  his  friend.  Now  she  is 
a  'ittle  shrunken  shell  of  a  town  without  a  proper 
hotel,  where  tourists  hurry  up  from  the  river  to 
buy  complete  sets  of  Soudan  stamps  at  the  Post 
Office. 

I  went  for  a  purposeless  walk  from  one  end  of  the 
place  to  the  other,  and  found  a  crowd  of  native  boys 
playing  football  on  what  might  have  been  a  parade- 
ground  of  old  days. 

"And  what  school  is  that?"  I  asked  in  English 
of  a  small,  eager  youth. 

"Madrissah,"  said  he  most  intelligently,  which 
being  translated  means  just  "school." 

"Yes,  but  what  school?" 


292         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

"Yes,  Madrissah,  school,  sar,"  and  he  tagged  after 
to  see  what  else  the  imbecile  wanted. 

A  line  of  railway  track,  that  must  have  fed  big 
workshops  in  its  time,  led  me  between  big-roomed 
houses  and  offices  labelled  departmentally,  with 
here  and  there  a  clerk  at  work.  I  was  directed  and 
re-directed  by  polite  Egyptian  officials  (I  wished  to 
get  at  a  white  officer  if  possible,  but  there  wasn't 
one  about);  was  turned  out  of  a  garden  which  be- 
longed to  an  Authority;  hung  round  the  gate  of  a 
bungalow  with  an  old-established  compound  and  two 
white  men  sitting  in  chairs  on  a  verandah;  wan- 
dered down  towards  the  river  under  the  palm  trees, 
where  the  last  red  light  came  through;  lost  myself 
among  rusty  boilers  and  balks  of  timber;  and  at  last 
loafed  back  in  the  twilight  escorted  by  the  small  boy 
and  an  entire  brigade  of  ghosts,  not  one  of  whom  I 
had  ever  met  before,  but  all  of  whom  I  knew  most 
intimately.  They  said  it  was  the  evenings  that 
used  to  depress  them  most,  too;  so  they  all  came 
back  after  dinner  and  bore  me  company,  while  I 
went  to  meet  a  friend  arriving  by  the  night  train 
from  Khartoum. 

She  was  an  hour  late,  and  we  spent  it,  the  ghosts 
and  I,  in  a  brick-walled,  tin-roofed  shed,  warm  with 
the  day's  heat;  a  crowd  of  natives  laughing  and  talk- 
ing somewhere  behind  in  the  darkness.  We  knew 
each  other  so  well  by  that  time,  that  we  had  finished 
discussing  every  conceivable  topic  of  conversation — 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  EMPIRE  293 

the  whereabouts  of  the  Mahdi's  head,  for  instance — 
work,  reward,  despair,  acknowledgment,  flat  failure, 
all  the  real  motives  that  had  driven  us  to  do  any- 
thing, and  all  our  other  longings.  So  we  sat  still  and 
let  the  stars  move,  as  men  must  do  when  they  meet 
this  kind  of  train. 

Presently  I  asked:  "What  is  the  name  of  the  next 
station  out  from  here?" 

"Station  Number  One,"  said  a  ghost. 

"And  the  next?" 

"Station  Number  Two,  and  so  on  to  Eight,  I 
think." 

"And  wasn't  it  worth  while  to  name  even  one 
of  these  stations  for  some  man,  living  or  dead,  who 
had  something  to  do  with  making  the  line?" 

"Well,  they  didn't,  anyhow,"  said  another  ghost. 
"I  suppose  they  didn't  think  it  worth  while.  Why? 
What  do  you  think?" 

"I  think,"  I  replied,  "it  is  the  sort  of  snobbery 
that  nations  go  to  Hades  for." 

Her  headlight  showed  at  last,  an  immense  distance 
off;  the  economic  electrics  were  turned  up,  the  ghosts 
vanished,  the  dragomans  of  the  various  steamers 
flowed  forward  in  beautiful  garments  to  meet  their 
passengers  who  had  booked  passages  in  the  Cook 
boats,  and  the  Khartoum  train  decanted  a  joyous 
collection  of  folk,  all  decorated  with  horns,  hoofs, 
skins,  hides,  knives,  and  assegais,  which  they  had 
been  buying  at  Omdurman.     And  when  the  porters 


394         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

laid  hold  upon  their  bristling  bundles,  it  was  like 
MacNeilFs  Zareba  without  the  camels. 

Two  young  men  in  tarboushes  were  the  only  people 
who  had  no  part  in  the  riot.  Said  one  of  them  to  the 
other: 

"Hullo?" 

Said  the  other:  "Hullo!" 

They  grunted  together  for  a  while.  Then  one 
pleasantly: 

"Oh,  I'm  sorry  for  that!  I  thought  I  was  going 
to  have  you  under  me  for  a  bit.  Then  you'll  use  the 
rest-house  there?" 

"I  suppose  so,"  said  the  other.  "Do  you  happen 
to  know  if  the  roof's  on  ?" 

Here  a  woman  wailed  aloud  for  her  dervish  spear 
which  had  gone  adrift,  and  I  shall  never  know,  ex- 
cept from  the  back  pages  of  the  Soudan  Almanack, 
what  state  that  rest-house  there  is  in. 

The  Soudan  Administration,  by  the  little  I  heard, 
is  a  queer  service.  It  extends  itself  in  silence  from 
the  edges  of  Abyssinia  to  the  swamps  of  the  Equator 
at  an  average  pressure  of  one  white  man  to  several 
thousand  square  miles.  It  legislates  according  to 
the  custom  of  the  tribe  where  possible,  and  on  the 
common  sense  of  the  moment  when  there  is  no  pre- 
cedent. It  is  recruited  almost  wholly  from  the  army, 
armed  chiefly  with  binoculars,  and  enjoys  a  death- 
rate  a  little  lower  than  its  own  reputation.  It  is  said 
to  be  the  only  service  in  which  a  man  taking  leave 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  EMPIRE  295 

is  explicitly  recommended  to  get  out  of  the  country 
and  rest  himself  that  he  may  return  the  more  fit  to  his 
job.  A  high  standard  of  intelligence  is  required,  and 
lapses  are  not  overlooked.  For  instance,  one  man 
on  leave  in  London  took  the  wrong  train  from  Bou- 
logne, and  instead  of  going  to  Paris,  which,  of  course, 
he  had  intended,  found  himself  at  a  station  called 
Kirk  Kilissie  or  Adrianople  West,  where  he  stayed 
for  some  weeks.  It  was  a  mistake  that  might  have 
happened  to  any  one  on  a  dark  night  after  a  stormy 
passage,  but  the  authorities  would  not  believe  it, 
and  when  I  left  Egypt  were  busily  engaged  in  boiling 
him  in  hot  oil.  They  are  grossly  respectable  in  the 
Soudan  now. 

Long  and  long  ago,  before  even  the  Philippines 
were  taken,  a  friend  of  mine  was  reprimanded  by  a 
British  Member  of  Parliament,  first  for  the  sin  of 
blood-guiltiness  because  he  was  by  trade  a  soldier, 
next  for  murder  because  he  had  fought  in  great  bat- 
tles, and  lastly,  and  most  important,  because  he  and 
his  fellow-braves  had  saddled  the  British  taxpayer 
with  the  expense  of  the  Soudan.  My  friend  ex- 
plained that  all  the  Soudan  had  ever  cost  the  British 
taxpayer  was  the  price  of  about  one  dozen  of  regula- 
tion Union  Jacks — one  for  each  province.  "That," 
said  the  M.P.  triumphantly,  "is  all  it  will  ever  be 
worth."  He  went  on  to  justify  himself,  and  the 
Soudan  went  on  also.  To-day  it  has  taken  its  place 
as  one  of  those  accepted  miracles  which  are  worked 


296         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

without  heat  or  headlines  by  men  who  do  the  job 
nearest  their  hand  and  seldom  fuss  about  their  repu- 
tations. 

But  less  than  sixteen  years  ago  the  length  and 
breadth  of  it  was  one  crazy  hell  of  murder,  torture, 
and  lust,  where  every  man  who  had  a  sword  used  it 
till  he  met  a  stronger  and  became  a  slave.  It  was — 
men  say  who  remember  it — a  hysteria  of  blood  and 
fanaticism;  and  precisely  as  an  hysterical  woman  is 
called  to  her  senses  by  a  dash  of  cold  water,  so  at  the 
battle  of  Omdurman  the  land  was  reduced  to  sanity 
by  applied  death  on  such  a  scale  as  the  murderers 
and  the  torturers  at  their  most  unbridled  could 
scarcely  have  dreamed.  In  a  day  and  a  night  all 
who  had  power  and  authority  were  wiped  out  and 
put  under  till,  as  the  old  song  says,  no  chief  remained 
to  ask  after  any  follower.  They  had  all  charged 
into  Paradise.  The  people  who  were  left  looked 
for  renewed  massacres  of  the  sort  they  had  been 
accustomed  to,  and  when  these  did  not  come,  they 
said  helplessly:  "We  have  nothing.  We  are  nothing. 
Will  you  sell  us  into  slavery  among  the  Egyptians?' 
The  men  who  remember  the  old  days  of  the  Recon- 
struction— which  deserves  an  epic  of  its  own — say 
that  there  was  nothing  left  to  build  on,  not  even 
wreckage.  Knowledge,  decency,  kinship,  property, 
title,  sense  of  possession  had  all  gone.  The  people 
were  told  they  were  to  sit  still  and  obey  orders;  and 
they  stared  and  fumbled  like  dazed  crowds  after  an 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  EMPIRE  297 

explosion.  Bit  by  bit,  however,  they  were  fed  and 
watered  and  marshalled  into  some  sort  of  order; 
set  to  tasks  they  never  dreamed  to  see  the  end  of; 
and,  almost  by  physical  force,  pushed  and  hauled 
along  the  ways  of  mere  life.  They  came  to  under- 
stand presently  that  they  could  reap  what  they  had 
sown,  and  that  man,  even  a  woman,  might  walk  for  a 
day's  journey  with  two  goats  and  a  native  bedstead 
and  live  undespoiled.  But  they  had  to  be  taught 
kindergarten-fashion. 

And  little  by  little,  as  they  realised  that  the  new 
order  was  sure  and  that  their  ancient  oppressors 
were  quite  dead,  there  returned  not  only  cultivators, 
craftsmen,  and  artisans,  but  outlandish  men  of  war, 
scarred  with  old  wounds  and  the  generous  dimples 
that  the  Martini-Henry  bullet  used  to  deal — fighting 
men  on  the  lookout  for  new  employ.  They  would 
hang  about,  first  on  one  leg  then  on  the  other, 
proud  or  uneasily  friendly,  till  some  white  officer 
circulated  near  by.  And  at  his  fourth  or  fifth  pass- 
ing, brown  and  white  having  approved  each  other 
by  eye,  the  talk — so  men  say — would  run  something 
like  this: 

Officer  (with  air  of  sudden  discovery).  Oh,  you 
by  the  hut,  there,  what  is  your  business? 

Warrior  (at  "attention"  complicated  by  attempt 
to  salute).  I  am  So-and-So,  son  of  So-and-So,  from 
such  and  such  a  place. 

Officer.     I  hear.     And    .     .     .     ? 


298         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

Warrior  (repeating  salute).  And  a  fighting  man 
also. 

Officer  (impersonally  to  horizon).  But  they  all 
say  that  nowadays. 

Warrior  (very  loudly).  But  there  is  a  man  in 
one  of  your  battalions  who  can  testify  to  it.  He  is 
the  grandson  of  my  father's  uncle. 

Officer  (confidentially  to  his  boots).  Hell  is  quite 
full  of  such  grandsons  of  just  such  father's  uncles; 
and  how  do  I  know  if  Private  So-and-So  speaks 
the  truth  about  his  family.     (Makes  to  go.) 

Warrior  (swiftly  removing  necessary  garments). 
Perhaps.  But  these  don't  lie.  Look!  I  got  this 
ten,  twelve  years  ago  when  I  was  quite  a  lad,  close 
to  the  old  Border.  Yes,  Haifa.  It  was  a  true  Snider 
bullet.  Feel  it!  This  little  one  on  the  leg  I  got  at 
the  big  fight  that  finished  it  all  last  year.  But  I  am 
not  lame  (violent  leg-exercise),  not  in  the  least  lame. 
See!     I  run.     I  jump.     I  kick.     Praised  be  Allah! 

Officer.     Praised  be  Allah!     And  then? 

Warrior  (coquettishly).  Then,  I  shoot.  I  am 
not  a  common  spear-man.  (Lapse  into  English.) 
Yeh,  dam  goo'  shot!  (pumps  lever  of  imaginary 
Martini) . 

Officer  (unmoved).     I  see.     And  then? 

Warrior  (indignantly).  I  am  come  here — after 
many  days'  marching.  (Change  to  childlike  wheedle.) 
Are  all  the  regiments  full  ? 

At  this  point  the  relative,  in  uniform,  generally 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  EMPIRE  299 

discovered  himself,  and  if  the  officer  liked  the  cut 
of  his  jib,  another  "old  Mahdi's  man"  would  be 
added  to  the  machine  that  made  itself  as  it  rolled 
along.  They  dealt  with  situations  in  those  days 
by  the  unclouded  light  of  reason  and  a  certain  high 
and  holy  audacity. 

There  is  a  tale  of  two  Sheikhs  shortly  after  the 
Reconstruction  began.  One  of  them,  Abdullah 
of  the  River,  prudent  and  the  son  of  a  slave-woman, 
professed  loyalty  to  the  English  very  early  in  the  day, 
and  used  that  loyalty  as  a  cloak  to  lift  camels  from 
another  Sheikh,  Farid  of  the  Desert,  still  at  war  with 
the  English,  but  a  perfect  gentleman,  which  Abdul- 
lah was  not.  Naturally,  Farid  raided  back  on  Ab- 
dullah's kine,  Abdullah  complained  to  the  authori- 
ties, and  the  Border  fermented.  To  Farid  in  his 
desert  camp  with  a  clutch  of  Abdullah's  cattle  round 
him,  entered,  alone  and  unarmed,  the  officer  respon- 
sible for  the  peace  of  those  parts.  After  compliments, 
for  they  had  had  dealings  with  each  other  before: 
"You've  been  driving  Abdullah's  stock  again,"  said 
the  Englishman. 

"I  should  think  I  had!"  was  the  hot  answer. 
"He  lifts  my  camels  and  scuttles  back  into  your 
territory,  where  he  knows  I  can't  follow  him  for 
the  life;  and  when  I  try  to  get  a  bit  of  my  own  back, 
he  whines  to  you.     He's  a  cad — an  utter  cad." 

"At  any  rate,  he  is  loyal.  If  you'd  only  come 
in  and   be  loyal  too,  you'd  both  be  on  the  same 


3oo         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

footing,  and  then  if  he  stole  from  you,  he'd  catch 
it!" 

"He'd  never  dare  to  steal  except  under  your  pro- 
tection. Give  him  what  he'd  have  got  in  the  Mah- 
di's  time — a  first-class  flogging.  You  know  he  de- 
serves  it! 

"I'm  afraid  that  isn't  allowed.  You  have  to 
let  me  shift  all  those  bullocks  of  his  back  again." 

"And  if  I  don't?" 

"Then,  I  shall  have  to  ride  back  and  collect  all 
my  men  and  begin  war  against  you." 

"But  what  prevents  my  cutting  your  throat  where 
you  sit?" 

"For  one  thing,  you  aren't  Abdullah,  and " 

"There!     You  confess  he's  a  cad!" 

"And  for  another,  the  Government  would  only 
send  another  officer  who  didn't  understand  your 
ways,  and  then  there  would  be  war,  and  no  one 
would  score  except  Abdullah.  He'd  steal  your 
camels  and  get  credit  for  it." 

"So  he  would,  the  scoundrel!  This  is  a  hard 
world  for  honest  men.  Now,  you  admit  Abdul- 
lah is  a  cad.  Listen  to  me,  and  I'll  tell  you  a  few 
more  things  about  him.  He  was,  etc.,  etc.  He  is, 
etc.,  etc." 

"You're  perfectly  right,  Sheikh,  but  don't  you 
see  I  can't  tell  him  what  I  think  of  him  so  long 
as  he's  loyal  and  you're  out  against  us?  Now,  if 
you  come  in  I  promise  you  that  I'll  give  Abdullah 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  EMPIRE  301 

a  telling-off — yes,   in   your  presence — that  will  do 
you  good  to  listen  to." 

"No!  I  won't  come  in!  But— I  tell  you  what  I 
will  do.  I'll  accompany  you  to-morrow  as  your 
guest,  understand,  to  your  camp.  Then  you  send 
for  Abdullah,  and  if  I  judge  that  his  fat  face  has 
been  sufficiently  blackened  in  my  presence,  I'll  think 
about  coming  in  later." 

So  it  was  arranged,  and  they  slept  out  the  rest 
of  the  night,  side  by  side,  and  in  the  morning  they 
gathered  up  and  returned  all  Abdullah's  cattle,  and 
in  the  evening,  in  Farid's  presence,  Abdullah  got 
the  tongue-lashing  of  his  wicked  old  life,  and  Farid 
of  the  Desert  laughed  and  came  in,  and  they  all 
lived  happy  ever  afterwards. 

Somewhere  or  other  in  the  nearer  provinces  the 
old  heady  game  must  be  going  on  still,  but  the  Sou- 
dan proper  has  settled  to  civilisation  of  the  brick- 
bungalow  and  bougainvillea  sort,  and  there  is  a 
huge  technical  college  where  the  young  men  are 
trained  to  become  fitters,  surveyors,  draftsmen,  and 
telegraph  employees  at  fabulous  wages.  In  due 
time,  they  will  forget  how  warily  their  fathers  had 
to  walk  in  the  Mahdi's  time  to  secure  even  half  a 
bellyful.  Then,  as  has  happened  elsewhere,  they 
will  honestly  believe  that  they  themselves  originally 
created  and  since  then  have  upheld  the  easy  life 
into  which  they  were  bought  at  so  heavy  a  price. 
Then  the  demand  will  go  up  for  "extension  of  local 


302         EGYPT  OF  THE  MAGICIANS 

government,"  "Soudan  for  the  Soudanese,"  and  so 
on  till  the  whole  cycle  has  to  be  retrodden.  It  is  a 
hard  law  but  an  old  one — Rome  died  learning  it, 
as  our  western  civilisation  may  die — that  if  you 
give  any  man  anything  that  he  has  not  painfully 
earned  for  himself,  you  infallibly  make  him  or  his 
descendants  your  devoted  enemies. 


THE    END 


THE  COUNTRY  LIFF  PRESS 
GARDEN  CITY,  N.  Y. 


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